[NOTE: The following article will also appear as my regular television column for WILDsound.]
After the CW found some success with "90210" last season, was there ever a doubt that a reboot of "Melrose Place" was soon to follow? Sure enough, a new version of the 1990s nighttime soap made its debut on Tuesday night (9:00 p.m. Eastern).
For me, there are two competing thoughts behind reviving "Melrose Place." On the one hand, with the movies dominated by sequels and remakes, part of me winces at the idea of a television network following suit. After all, TV is the go-to medium now for creative outside-of-the-box stories. At the same time, we're not talking about disturbing the memory of "Seinfeld" or "Hill Street Blues" here. It's "Melrose" freakin' "Place." It was a crappy sudsfest when it first aired. Even its fans knew it was a silly piece of fluff. What is there to lose?
After having watched the first couple of seasons of the original "Beverly Hills, 90210," I didn't go along when Fox spun off the first incarnation of "Melrose Place." "Beverly Hills" was already getting on my nerves, and "Melrose" looked just too silly for me. So in tuning in on Tuesday, I admit that any thrill (and I use that word very, very loosely) of seeing cast members from the old show on the new one was going to be lost on me. The new "Melrose" was going to have to earn my affection on its merits. It never happened.
As I recall of the original "Melrose" (I did end up watching an episode here and there), it started as a super-corny soap opera, and as time went on, it found a niche, developing outlandish characters and over-the-top story lines. So I figured that a 21st century "Melrose" would double down on the crazy. I'm not sure if executive producers Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer (both from "Smallville") decided to go another way, or they just misjudged what would make a splash, but the adjective I would use to best describe the premiere episode of the new "Melrose" would not be "wild" or "edgy." I'd lean more to "dull" or "calculated."
The new "Melrose" begins with a super-slick ("90210"-like) burst of quick cuts of Los Angeles at night, before moving inside to the television version of a hot Hollywood club, in which a guy we later learn is David (Shaun Sipos) feverishly makes out with a woman. Despite her warning not to, David checks his phone and finds that he's gotten an S.O.S. text message. So David springs into action, seemingly re-enacting the scene in "St. Elmo's Fire" when Demi Moore tries to kill herself (by, uh, sitting in front of an open window?), trying to gather the gang to save her. David starts calling the rest of his fellow apartment dwellers to alert them to the emergency. Chef Augie (Colin Egglesfield of "Ally My Children") can't get away from the restaurant, and medical student Lauren (Stephanie Jacobsen) can't get away from the hospital, so unlike the "St. Elmo's" crew, who all respond to the call to arms, David arrives at the familiar Melrose Place apartment complex alone. He finds -- wait for the twist! -- Sydney (Laura Leighton, looking not much different from her first go-round on the Place) calmly sitting and waiting for him. The old-new cast crossover isn't done, as we find out that David's estranged father is Michael (Thomas Calabro), the evil doctor from "Melrose" the first, and both father and son have been intimate with Sydney.
The real problem with the new "Melrose" is that, at least so far, there aren't any characters who are interesting enough to make us care as much as (some of) us did about the first "Melrose" crew. Bad boy David is like Dylan (from "Beverly Hills, 90210") light. Egglesfield's Augie is as stiff and boring as you'd expect from a daytime soap himbo. Lauren's story line, which is kicked off when her father calls her at work to tell her he can't pay her medical school bills (likely one of the 10 most cliched and poorly written scenes in television history), failed to move me.
The other residents are no better. Ella (Katie Cassidy), the new queen of Melrose, plays like a Heather Locklear wannabe, bitchy but, ultimately, not especially scary. We're supposed to be shocked when she locks lips with a woman near the end of the hour (she's bi ... gasp!), but in 2009, it didn't have the impact that the show runners clearly intended. Ella helps get a gig for Jonah (Michael Rady of the far better "Swingtown"), who is saddled with the well-worn TV character of the talented aspiring filmmaker looking for a break. Ella has a thinly veiled crush on Jonah, but he is ga ga for his live-in girlfriend Riley (Jennifer Lucas), proposing to her via a slick no-way-it-could-exist-in-real-life video retrospective of their relationship. Riley, a school teacher, can't decide whether or not to say yes, worried that Jonah is too much of a kid (seriously, these are the plots they came up with).
Last, and certainly least, innocent Violet hangs around the apartment complex, doing ... well, not much of anything. Lip-syncher/celebrity sister Ashlee Simpson-Wentz (oh Pete, Fall Out Boy is a good band, what were you thinking marrying this poster child for plastic surgery and nepotism?) plays Violet, and she is hard to watch. Not only has Simpson-Wentz had so much work done that she is virtually unrecognizable from the woman who embarrassed herself on "Saturday Night Live," but she is so stiff and mannered, it's amazing she is allowed to act on a network television drama. Every time she was on screen, I was distracted by how awful she was.
The writing isn't any better than the weak cast and characters. After a murder in the apartment complex (I won't reveal who the victim is to preserve the twist), Augie says: "I should have come back with David. Maybe I could have saved (the victim)," to which Riley responds: "You can't blame yourself, Augie." There are lame fantasy/flashback scenes, and David and Michael have an argument in Michael's swanky luxury car that followed the same tired "You weren't there for me" track we've seen a million times. By the time a seemingly nice son of a patient offers Lauren $5,000 to sleep with him (in the second least believable and poorly written scene in the episode, after Lauren's conversation with her father about the tuition), and after Lauren's ridiculous conversation with Violet (who convinces her there is really nothing wrong with doing it, since she probably would have slept with him anyway), Lauren shows up at the guy's room, and we're supposed to be dying in suspense to see what happens next. Only, I wasn't.
This is the new "Melrose Place."
Not wacky enough to mimic its predecessor, and not interesting enough to entertain on its own, I'm not sure what the new "Melrose" is supposed to be. Maybe the crazy over-the-top plot lines are warming up in the bullpen. But as of now, there is nothing to recommend the new "Melrose."
For the second time in my lifetime, I'm going to pass on watching "Melrose Place."
Friday, September 11, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
On Wednesday, the President Has to Move the Health Care Debate from a Marketplace of Lies to a Marketplace of Ideas
[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]
- John Boehner has a fetish that only allows him to become aroused when he wears 1950s women's housecoats with curlers in his hair.
- Rush Limbaugh eats pudding made from the rats that infest his home.
- Charles Grassley calls in sick to the Senate once a week to stay home and watch a DVD of "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" over and over again.
Are these statements true? Of course not. (Or, to give the Republicans a taste of their own medicine relative to how they generally answer questions about the president's place of birth, I should say, to the best of my knowledge, those statements are not true.) But why shouldn't I write them anyway? After all, the Republican opposition to health care reform has been built on lies nearly as egregious as the ones I set out above.
As President Obama gets ready to lay out his vision of health care reform on Wednesday, it is important to note that the debate on the issue to this point has been, in reality, nonexistent. Yes, there has been a lot of talk about health care, but there has not been an honest exchange of ideas. Rather, Republicans (and some Democrats) opposed to health care reform have flooded the marketplace of ideas with outright lies, and defenders of health care reform have been forced to rebut those lies, distracting them from the simple job of laying out the case for reform, which, given the financial numbers involved, is stark (you can click here to see some of the figures I cited in July).
I am all for a debate on any important issue facing the country. Even though I consider myself a progressive and generally support progressive proposals, I don't think the left has a monopoly on good ideas, and I certainly don't have full faith in the Democrats in Congress to lead on any issue. I think that reasonable conservatives can make completely fair arguments opposing health care reform (even if I don't personally agree with them), ranging from an idea that the nation can't afford the expenditure to an honest admission that under the conservative point of view, the people who have earned (or inherited) money shouldn't be forced to subsidize health care for those who have not has been as successful or fortunate. I would especially respect any Republican (or Democratic, for that matter, since many, unfortunately, fall into this category) lawmaker who would stand up and say, "Look, I get millions in donations from the insurance and pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, so I have to support their positions, or I won't have any money and won't get re-elected." It would be the most honest enunciation yet of the real reasons for members of Congress to oppose health care reform, and it would allow us to move past the lies and misdirections employed by these legislators. (Well, for the Republicans, it's also about the political gamesmanship, since they would rather see the country suffer under the current health care environment than give the president a "win" on the issue. Remember Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina proudly saying that health care will be "Obama's Waterloo.")
But the elected Republicans (and Democrats) opposing health care reform are not standing up for their principles. Rather, they are using fear and lies to try and kill progress on health care reform. (Back in June, I wrote about the specific lies and leaps in logic employed by the right to oppose health care reform.) And seizing on the inattentiveness and/or selfishness of the American people, the opposition has had some success.
Rather than arguing finances or moral obligations, or copping to being captured by the health and pharmaceutical companies, Republicans (and some Democrats) are lying. They are stoking loony right-wing charges that the president is a socialist and that health care reform is a method by which he is trying to initiate a government takeover of American business. They talk of death panels and mandatory abortions. They accuse Obama of trying to institute a Canadian-style single-payer system and point to (largely incorrect) figures on how damaging such a system is to the health of individuals under such a regime. Hell, they even had a breakdown when the president decided to address American school children.
(As an aside, what do you think these Republicans would have said if parents protested George W. Bush addressing kids? You can be sure there would have been charges that these parents lacked respect for the president and, of course, were not suitably patriotic. But when the president is a Democrat -- and African American, to boot -- suddenly words like "indoctrination" and "socialism" are thrown out by the right. Conservatives' treatment of Barack Obama in this instance has been insanely hypocritical, and yet that issue is never addressed in the media's coverage of the opposition to the president's planned address.)
But here's the thing: Whatever you believe about socialism, Obama is not in any way, shape or form a socialist. Even with the government's forays into the financial, auto and, now, hopefully, the health care industries, it is only touching a slight fraction of American business. Calling Obama a socialist is a lie, every bit as ridiculous as my opening statements about Boehner, Limbaugh and Grassley. Same goes for death panels, mandatory abortions and the attempt to move the U.S. to a single-payer health care system.
If the media refuses to present the opposition to health care for what it is, instead pretending that an honest debate is going on, and if the American people seem unwilling or unable to recognize what the Republicans (and some Democrats) are doing to manipulate them with lies, then what is the president to do? After running a pitch-perfect campaign, we have become accustomed to Obama finding a way to counter any problem in perception, like his Philadelphia speech on race in March 2008, after the surfacing of incendiary comments of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Things may be much harder for the president to control now. But one thing he can do is take over leadership on the issue from the Democrats in Congress, who have less credibility with the American people and who, to date, have not shown the strength and leadership necessary to shepherd health care reform through the legislative process.
Instead, it's time for Obama to take the lead on the issue. His attempts in his first year in office to enunciate key principles but leave the nuts-and-bolts drafting of legislation to Congress were understandable, but such an approach hasn't worked with health care. On Wednesday, Obama needs to cut through the lies and lay out for the American people exactly where the country stands with regard to health care. He needs to explain that we are on financially untenable ground, with health care costs for the country exploding at alarming rates, and with tens of millions of Americans without health insurance coverage. He has to say exactly, in painstaking detail, what he wants to do. And, as importantly, he has to enunciate clearly what he is not asking that the government be allowed to do. He should even use graphs and illustrations if they'll help. Whatever it takes.
(In an ideal world, I would be in favor of a single-payer, Canadian-style system, but if such an approach is not realistic in the current U.S. political climate, and if opponents of health care reform are lying and calling the current proposal an attempt to move the country to a single-payer system, then Obama has to delineate how these charges are lies, and what exactly he is proposing the government do under a reformed health care system, which is short of a single-payer approach.)
In short, Obama has to use Wednesday's speech to move the health care debate from a marketplace of lies to a marketplace of ideas. It's a huge task, and it may be too late, but it's the best chance the president has to save true health care reform this year. The stakes are high. If outright lies end up killing health care reform, the Republicans will have won, but, more importantly, the American people will have lost.
- John Boehner has a fetish that only allows him to become aroused when he wears 1950s women's housecoats with curlers in his hair.
- Rush Limbaugh eats pudding made from the rats that infest his home.
- Charles Grassley calls in sick to the Senate once a week to stay home and watch a DVD of "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" over and over again.
Are these statements true? Of course not. (Or, to give the Republicans a taste of their own medicine relative to how they generally answer questions about the president's place of birth, I should say, to the best of my knowledge, those statements are not true.) But why shouldn't I write them anyway? After all, the Republican opposition to health care reform has been built on lies nearly as egregious as the ones I set out above.
As President Obama gets ready to lay out his vision of health care reform on Wednesday, it is important to note that the debate on the issue to this point has been, in reality, nonexistent. Yes, there has been a lot of talk about health care, but there has not been an honest exchange of ideas. Rather, Republicans (and some Democrats) opposed to health care reform have flooded the marketplace of ideas with outright lies, and defenders of health care reform have been forced to rebut those lies, distracting them from the simple job of laying out the case for reform, which, given the financial numbers involved, is stark (you can click here to see some of the figures I cited in July).
I am all for a debate on any important issue facing the country. Even though I consider myself a progressive and generally support progressive proposals, I don't think the left has a monopoly on good ideas, and I certainly don't have full faith in the Democrats in Congress to lead on any issue. I think that reasonable conservatives can make completely fair arguments opposing health care reform (even if I don't personally agree with them), ranging from an idea that the nation can't afford the expenditure to an honest admission that under the conservative point of view, the people who have earned (or inherited) money shouldn't be forced to subsidize health care for those who have not has been as successful or fortunate. I would especially respect any Republican (or Democratic, for that matter, since many, unfortunately, fall into this category) lawmaker who would stand up and say, "Look, I get millions in donations from the insurance and pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, so I have to support their positions, or I won't have any money and won't get re-elected." It would be the most honest enunciation yet of the real reasons for members of Congress to oppose health care reform, and it would allow us to move past the lies and misdirections employed by these legislators. (Well, for the Republicans, it's also about the political gamesmanship, since they would rather see the country suffer under the current health care environment than give the president a "win" on the issue. Remember Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina proudly saying that health care will be "Obama's Waterloo.")
But the elected Republicans (and Democrats) opposing health care reform are not standing up for their principles. Rather, they are using fear and lies to try and kill progress on health care reform. (Back in June, I wrote about the specific lies and leaps in logic employed by the right to oppose health care reform.) And seizing on the inattentiveness and/or selfishness of the American people, the opposition has had some success.
Rather than arguing finances or moral obligations, or copping to being captured by the health and pharmaceutical companies, Republicans (and some Democrats) are lying. They are stoking loony right-wing charges that the president is a socialist and that health care reform is a method by which he is trying to initiate a government takeover of American business. They talk of death panels and mandatory abortions. They accuse Obama of trying to institute a Canadian-style single-payer system and point to (largely incorrect) figures on how damaging such a system is to the health of individuals under such a regime. Hell, they even had a breakdown when the president decided to address American school children.
(As an aside, what do you think these Republicans would have said if parents protested George W. Bush addressing kids? You can be sure there would have been charges that these parents lacked respect for the president and, of course, were not suitably patriotic. But when the president is a Democrat -- and African American, to boot -- suddenly words like "indoctrination" and "socialism" are thrown out by the right. Conservatives' treatment of Barack Obama in this instance has been insanely hypocritical, and yet that issue is never addressed in the media's coverage of the opposition to the president's planned address.)
But here's the thing: Whatever you believe about socialism, Obama is not in any way, shape or form a socialist. Even with the government's forays into the financial, auto and, now, hopefully, the health care industries, it is only touching a slight fraction of American business. Calling Obama a socialist is a lie, every bit as ridiculous as my opening statements about Boehner, Limbaugh and Grassley. Same goes for death panels, mandatory abortions and the attempt to move the U.S. to a single-payer health care system.
If the media refuses to present the opposition to health care for what it is, instead pretending that an honest debate is going on, and if the American people seem unwilling or unable to recognize what the Republicans (and some Democrats) are doing to manipulate them with lies, then what is the president to do? After running a pitch-perfect campaign, we have become accustomed to Obama finding a way to counter any problem in perception, like his Philadelphia speech on race in March 2008, after the surfacing of incendiary comments of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Things may be much harder for the president to control now. But one thing he can do is take over leadership on the issue from the Democrats in Congress, who have less credibility with the American people and who, to date, have not shown the strength and leadership necessary to shepherd health care reform through the legislative process.
Instead, it's time for Obama to take the lead on the issue. His attempts in his first year in office to enunciate key principles but leave the nuts-and-bolts drafting of legislation to Congress were understandable, but such an approach hasn't worked with health care. On Wednesday, Obama needs to cut through the lies and lay out for the American people exactly where the country stands with regard to health care. He needs to explain that we are on financially untenable ground, with health care costs for the country exploding at alarming rates, and with tens of millions of Americans without health insurance coverage. He has to say exactly, in painstaking detail, what he wants to do. And, as importantly, he has to enunciate clearly what he is not asking that the government be allowed to do. He should even use graphs and illustrations if they'll help. Whatever it takes.
(In an ideal world, I would be in favor of a single-payer, Canadian-style system, but if such an approach is not realistic in the current U.S. political climate, and if opponents of health care reform are lying and calling the current proposal an attempt to move the country to a single-payer system, then Obama has to delineate how these charges are lies, and what exactly he is proposing the government do under a reformed health care system, which is short of a single-payer approach.)
In short, Obama has to use Wednesday's speech to move the health care debate from a marketplace of lies to a marketplace of ideas. It's a huge task, and it may be too late, but it's the best chance the president has to save true health care reform this year. The stakes are high. If outright lies end up killing health care reform, the Republicans will have won, but, more importantly, the American people will have lost.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
"Mad Men" Is Hitting Its Stride in Its Third Season
[NOTE: The following article will also appear as my regular television column for WILDsound.]
In my sixth column for WILDsound, back in 2007, I reviewed a new program called "Mad Men." I reread the article today, after watching the third episode of the show's third season (AMC, Sundays at 10:00 p.m. Eastern), and I was struck by how "Mad Men" has managed to grow into one of the very best shows on television, all while taking risks and evolving into completely new worlds. And how the show has done so in a subtle way that leaves the viewer feeling like not much has changed at all. That's no easy task.
In that early review I was overwhelmed by the flood of scenes meant to shock our 21st century sensibilities by showing how different things were in 1960 (for example, a gynecologist doing a vaginal exam with a cigarette hanging from his lips and warning his patient that she shouldn't become a "strumpet" because he has prescribed birth control pills for her), and while I noted how well-written and well-acted the episode was, I asked if the show would be able to get beyond the shock value and "wafer-thin plots" and sustain audience engagement over a longer period of time. After two seasons and three episodes, I think we can safely say the answer is a resounding "yes."
That's not to say that "Mad Men" still doesn't aim to unnerve its audience. Watching Betty Draper (January Jones) down whiskey while eight-plus months pregnant is hard to watch. And in what has to be one of the most shocking, daring and disturbing moments anyone will air on television this year, agency honcho Roger Sterling (John Slattery) sings "My Old Kentucky Home" to his new bride, Jane (Peyton List), at a party while in blackface (including crooning the line, "'Tis summer and the darkies are gay"). "Mad Men" constantly reminds us how different the world was in the early 1960s, but at the same time, how little has changed.
As interesting as the drama's bravery can be in revealing the darker side of recent American social history, show runner Matthew Weiner is equally brave in taking "Mad Men" on ever-new journeys. When the program started, the central plot element was watching Don use his life interactions (some seedier than others) to come up with his brilliant advertising ideas that, often, saved the day at the last possible moment. Now, in the third season, we rarely see Don generating ideas. In fact, in the third episode, which aired last Sunday, Don was off at Roger's party while secretary-turned-hotshot-copywriter Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) was forced to work on a last-minute assignment for Bacardi rum, with help from her fellow creatives Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis) and Smitty (Patrick Cavanaugh), and her new secretary, the matronly Olive (Judy Kain). After Paul and Smitty decide to get stoned, and Peggy boldly insists on taking part, too, she is inspired on how to save the Bacardi campaign, something we would have seen Don do in the first season.
In fact, in many ways, this season has seen Peggy striving to become Don, in both good ways and bad, as she has become essentially a co-lead of the series. And we have followed Peggy's life adventures in the way we used to follow Don's (although we have seen Don stray from his marriage this season, with a flight attendant on a business trip to Baltimore). Peggy has picked up (and discarded) a one-night stand. As the third episode begins, we note (even though it is not explicitly mentioned) that she has canned her less-than-respectful secretary, Lola, in favor of Olive, and later, she firmly puts Olive in her place when she tries to scold Peggy for getting stoned with the guys. When Paul tells Peggy to get a blender they can use to make Bacardi drinks, Peggy immediately snaps back that he should get it himself (although she relents when he protests that he's eating, an orange half-peeled in his hand). Peggy's evolution has been one of the most satisfying story lines on the program. This season has picked up beautifully from last season's finale, when Peggy spurned Pete Campbell's (Vincent Kartheiser) declaration of love and told him about their child, a body blow considering how much trouble he and his wife were having conceiving a baby of their own.
Weiner has also been unafraid to uproot us after each season and jump the story forward in time, from 1960 to 1962 between the first two seasons, and then another year forward before this one. And as in-your-face as he can be with the early 1960s anachronisms, he is equally subtle in showing the passage of time. For example, in season two, Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) sought and received permission to head a new television department at Sterling Cooper. Roger grants his request almost as an afterthought, and it takes Harry several episodes to earn the right to even hire one man to help (a great plot line that included Joan temporarily taking the job and excelling, only to have Harry and Roger not even consider her for the full-time position). This season, with no discussion, Harry is now a player, even being invited to Roger's party with heavy hitters like Don and new co-accounts heads Pete and Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton), all while Peggy, Paul and Smitty are left behind.
Even as the plot marches forward, "Mad Men" is more about its interactions than its overriding stories. In fact, in last Sunday's episode, on the surface, not much happened. Don, Pete, Harry and their wives (along with the stag Ken) go to Roger's party. Peggy, Smitty and Paul, with the help of Paul's old Princeton buddy Jeffrey (Miles Fisher), who is now a drug dealer, try and figure out what to do about Bacardi. At the Draper house, housekeeper Carla (Deborah Lacey) is stuck with Betty's Alzheimer's-stricken father, Gene (Ryan Cutrona), and the Draper kids, Sally (Kiernan Shipka) and Bobby (Jared Gilmore), with the major drama being Gene's search for the $5 that we know Sally has stolen from him. And office manager Joan (Christina Hendricks) hosts a dinner party for two of her husband's medical superiors and their wives.
But despite the lack of big show-changing events, the episode was a riveting hour of television, with smaller moments ruling the day. Don's disdain of Roger comes to a head, first when he walks out during Roger's racist musical number (even though none of the other guests seem to mind, including Betty, who beams while listening), and later when Roger confronts Don on his surliness. Don's conversation with a wedding guest at the club (each found a desolate bar to escape their events), in which the two successful men admit to their more modest roots and disdain of the country club existence, was special. (I can't help wonder if Don was telling a tall tale or a true story when he told the older gentleman that when he parked cars at an upscale night club as a 15-year-old, he urinated in the guests' trunks when he had to go because he wasn't allowed to use the establishment's bathroom.) Peggy's chance meeting with a smitten older bachelor who wants to feel her pregnant belly was the kind of offbeat, nearly surreal scene that nearly no other current program could even attempt to pull off. When the two are introduced later, guilt hangs in the air, the two having shared an innocent moment that nevertheless felt intimate and illicit. It recalled Peggy's one-night stand in the back room of a bar in last season's finale.
A stoned Peggy's speech to her new secretary, nailing that Olive was more scared to work for a woman than she was worried about Peggy's future, was brilliant, both in the writing and Moss's performance. When Peggy leans in and says to Olive, "Don't worry about me. I am going to get to do everything you want me to do. I'm going to be fine. I really am," it's a "wow" moment.
Joan gamely playing the accordion and cooing a French song for her guests, despite her lack of practice, all to turn the attention away from the almost off-hand revelation that her slimy husband had screwed up at work, showed the power of Joan as a character and Hendricks as an actor. Knowing that her husband, threatened by Roger's money and power, raped Joan in Roger's office last year hung over the whole dinner party like an approaching storm. It was subtle, but powerful nonetheless.
Even in the lighter, more comedic scenes revolving around Peggy, Paul and Smitty getting high with Jeffrey, little factoids emerge. Jeffrey, jealous of Paul's set-up at Sterling Cooper (and, probably more importantly, impressed with Peggy), pokes a hole in Paul's hipster persona and accent, outing him as arriving at Princeton as a poor kid from Jersey in need of a scholarship. Similarly, as Don and Betty help the blitzed Jane to her seat, Jane drunkenly reveals that she knew of Don and Betty's separation (she was Don's secretary at the time), sending Betty into a bit of a tizzy, which may or may not have been resolved by the episode's final moment, Don and Betty's kiss in moonlight, with the camera at a respectful distance.
The way Weiner quietly and skillfully moves his characters around, and the moods he creates in doing so, is nothing short of masterful. The third episode didn't even overtly address the office drama of the first two episodes of the season, which largely revolved around the takeover of Sterling Cooper by a British agency. It didn't need to. As an audience, we were interested just the same.
Throw into the mix the show's almost fetishistic attention to period detail in its wardrobe and set-dressing, the uniformly pitch-perfect cast (including the guest turns), and the clever, dramatic writing, and "Mad Men" is nothing short of an American classic, in the same ballpark with some of the great plays and films of our time.
Now in its third season, the program is hitting its stride, even as its creator has deftly blown up so much of went before. The show cleaned up on Emmy nominations, and based on the steadily increasing ratings, more and more people are finding out what they've been missing with "Mad Men." All of the attention is well-deserved.
In my 2007 review, I spent a lot of time talking about Don as a potentially unsympathetic lead. But in 2009, I can't think of a group of characters with whom I'd rather spend an hour.
In my sixth column for WILDsound, back in 2007, I reviewed a new program called "Mad Men." I reread the article today, after watching the third episode of the show's third season (AMC, Sundays at 10:00 p.m. Eastern), and I was struck by how "Mad Men" has managed to grow into one of the very best shows on television, all while taking risks and evolving into completely new worlds. And how the show has done so in a subtle way that leaves the viewer feeling like not much has changed at all. That's no easy task.
In that early review I was overwhelmed by the flood of scenes meant to shock our 21st century sensibilities by showing how different things were in 1960 (for example, a gynecologist doing a vaginal exam with a cigarette hanging from his lips and warning his patient that she shouldn't become a "strumpet" because he has prescribed birth control pills for her), and while I noted how well-written and well-acted the episode was, I asked if the show would be able to get beyond the shock value and "wafer-thin plots" and sustain audience engagement over a longer period of time. After two seasons and three episodes, I think we can safely say the answer is a resounding "yes."
That's not to say that "Mad Men" still doesn't aim to unnerve its audience. Watching Betty Draper (January Jones) down whiskey while eight-plus months pregnant is hard to watch. And in what has to be one of the most shocking, daring and disturbing moments anyone will air on television this year, agency honcho Roger Sterling (John Slattery) sings "My Old Kentucky Home" to his new bride, Jane (Peyton List), at a party while in blackface (including crooning the line, "'Tis summer and the darkies are gay"). "Mad Men" constantly reminds us how different the world was in the early 1960s, but at the same time, how little has changed.
As interesting as the drama's bravery can be in revealing the darker side of recent American social history, show runner Matthew Weiner is equally brave in taking "Mad Men" on ever-new journeys. When the program started, the central plot element was watching Don use his life interactions (some seedier than others) to come up with his brilliant advertising ideas that, often, saved the day at the last possible moment. Now, in the third season, we rarely see Don generating ideas. In fact, in the third episode, which aired last Sunday, Don was off at Roger's party while secretary-turned-hotshot-copywriter Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) was forced to work on a last-minute assignment for Bacardi rum, with help from her fellow creatives Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis) and Smitty (Patrick Cavanaugh), and her new secretary, the matronly Olive (Judy Kain). After Paul and Smitty decide to get stoned, and Peggy boldly insists on taking part, too, she is inspired on how to save the Bacardi campaign, something we would have seen Don do in the first season.
In fact, in many ways, this season has seen Peggy striving to become Don, in both good ways and bad, as she has become essentially a co-lead of the series. And we have followed Peggy's life adventures in the way we used to follow Don's (although we have seen Don stray from his marriage this season, with a flight attendant on a business trip to Baltimore). Peggy has picked up (and discarded) a one-night stand. As the third episode begins, we note (even though it is not explicitly mentioned) that she has canned her less-than-respectful secretary, Lola, in favor of Olive, and later, she firmly puts Olive in her place when she tries to scold Peggy for getting stoned with the guys. When Paul tells Peggy to get a blender they can use to make Bacardi drinks, Peggy immediately snaps back that he should get it himself (although she relents when he protests that he's eating, an orange half-peeled in his hand). Peggy's evolution has been one of the most satisfying story lines on the program. This season has picked up beautifully from last season's finale, when Peggy spurned Pete Campbell's (Vincent Kartheiser) declaration of love and told him about their child, a body blow considering how much trouble he and his wife were having conceiving a baby of their own.
Weiner has also been unafraid to uproot us after each season and jump the story forward in time, from 1960 to 1962 between the first two seasons, and then another year forward before this one. And as in-your-face as he can be with the early 1960s anachronisms, he is equally subtle in showing the passage of time. For example, in season two, Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) sought and received permission to head a new television department at Sterling Cooper. Roger grants his request almost as an afterthought, and it takes Harry several episodes to earn the right to even hire one man to help (a great plot line that included Joan temporarily taking the job and excelling, only to have Harry and Roger not even consider her for the full-time position). This season, with no discussion, Harry is now a player, even being invited to Roger's party with heavy hitters like Don and new co-accounts heads Pete and Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton), all while Peggy, Paul and Smitty are left behind.
Even as the plot marches forward, "Mad Men" is more about its interactions than its overriding stories. In fact, in last Sunday's episode, on the surface, not much happened. Don, Pete, Harry and their wives (along with the stag Ken) go to Roger's party. Peggy, Smitty and Paul, with the help of Paul's old Princeton buddy Jeffrey (Miles Fisher), who is now a drug dealer, try and figure out what to do about Bacardi. At the Draper house, housekeeper Carla (Deborah Lacey) is stuck with Betty's Alzheimer's-stricken father, Gene (Ryan Cutrona), and the Draper kids, Sally (Kiernan Shipka) and Bobby (Jared Gilmore), with the major drama being Gene's search for the $5 that we know Sally has stolen from him. And office manager Joan (Christina Hendricks) hosts a dinner party for two of her husband's medical superiors and their wives.
But despite the lack of big show-changing events, the episode was a riveting hour of television, with smaller moments ruling the day. Don's disdain of Roger comes to a head, first when he walks out during Roger's racist musical number (even though none of the other guests seem to mind, including Betty, who beams while listening), and later when Roger confronts Don on his surliness. Don's conversation with a wedding guest at the club (each found a desolate bar to escape their events), in which the two successful men admit to their more modest roots and disdain of the country club existence, was special. (I can't help wonder if Don was telling a tall tale or a true story when he told the older gentleman that when he parked cars at an upscale night club as a 15-year-old, he urinated in the guests' trunks when he had to go because he wasn't allowed to use the establishment's bathroom.) Peggy's chance meeting with a smitten older bachelor who wants to feel her pregnant belly was the kind of offbeat, nearly surreal scene that nearly no other current program could even attempt to pull off. When the two are introduced later, guilt hangs in the air, the two having shared an innocent moment that nevertheless felt intimate and illicit. It recalled Peggy's one-night stand in the back room of a bar in last season's finale.
A stoned Peggy's speech to her new secretary, nailing that Olive was more scared to work for a woman than she was worried about Peggy's future, was brilliant, both in the writing and Moss's performance. When Peggy leans in and says to Olive, "Don't worry about me. I am going to get to do everything you want me to do. I'm going to be fine. I really am," it's a "wow" moment.
Joan gamely playing the accordion and cooing a French song for her guests, despite her lack of practice, all to turn the attention away from the almost off-hand revelation that her slimy husband had screwed up at work, showed the power of Joan as a character and Hendricks as an actor. Knowing that her husband, threatened by Roger's money and power, raped Joan in Roger's office last year hung over the whole dinner party like an approaching storm. It was subtle, but powerful nonetheless.
Even in the lighter, more comedic scenes revolving around Peggy, Paul and Smitty getting high with Jeffrey, little factoids emerge. Jeffrey, jealous of Paul's set-up at Sterling Cooper (and, probably more importantly, impressed with Peggy), pokes a hole in Paul's hipster persona and accent, outing him as arriving at Princeton as a poor kid from Jersey in need of a scholarship. Similarly, as Don and Betty help the blitzed Jane to her seat, Jane drunkenly reveals that she knew of Don and Betty's separation (she was Don's secretary at the time), sending Betty into a bit of a tizzy, which may or may not have been resolved by the episode's final moment, Don and Betty's kiss in moonlight, with the camera at a respectful distance.
The way Weiner quietly and skillfully moves his characters around, and the moods he creates in doing so, is nothing short of masterful. The third episode didn't even overtly address the office drama of the first two episodes of the season, which largely revolved around the takeover of Sterling Cooper by a British agency. It didn't need to. As an audience, we were interested just the same.
Throw into the mix the show's almost fetishistic attention to period detail in its wardrobe and set-dressing, the uniformly pitch-perfect cast (including the guest turns), and the clever, dramatic writing, and "Mad Men" is nothing short of an American classic, in the same ballpark with some of the great plays and films of our time.
Now in its third season, the program is hitting its stride, even as its creator has deftly blown up so much of went before. The show cleaned up on Emmy nominations, and based on the steadily increasing ratings, more and more people are finding out what they've been missing with "Mad Men." All of the attention is well-deserved.
In my 2007 review, I spent a lot of time talking about Don as a potentially unsympathetic lead. But in 2009, I can't think of a group of characters with whom I'd rather spend an hour.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
