5 posts tagged “television”

For any Mad Men fans who don't read Alan Sepinwall's blog, here's an interview with Matt Weiner about the show. There's a list of highlights and a transcript of the entire conversation.

I love Weiner's response to this question:

People lied this year about a lot of things.

I think they did last year, I don't think people were attuned to it. There were a lot of comments last year, "Why did she say that? We saw that she did something else." It's because she was lying!

I find it incredible that any fans of Mad Men, of all shows, don't get this. People lie every day. Anyone who watches MM and doesn't understand that, and can't accept that from the characters, should be watching reruns of Matlock.

Of all the comments Weiner makes, this is my favorite:

I can say one thing in advance: the Kennedy assassination is very well-trod territory, and I just don't see myself adding new to that. But I might start the day before it. Or I might do what I did with a lot of historical events, which is to put it in the background and show people's personal events overtaking it. That's one of the things I love about the finale. Here's the Cuban Missile Crisis, which other than the assassination was the defining moment of the '60s. It really changed people's lives. There is not one account, not one news report that says it was anything but completely catastrophic to people's personal lives and their perception of the world. I tried to get that feeling in there, but to show that, like any crisis, it's an excuse to tell the truth.

Writing is all about telling the truth, and Weiner does it better than most.

Not only do I watch a lot of television, I also spend a fair amount of time on-line talking about it. Maybe it's because I encounter so many more people at one time when I'm on-line than I do in real life, but I'm often surrounded by assholes. There are the regular crimes like name-calling, gasbagging and nitpicking, and then there are the two crimes that irritate me so much that I wish I were in charge of the inter-webs so I could ban the perpetrators asses forever.

This comment below (in bolded text), about Betty Draper, a character on Mad Men, is an extreme example of both crimes. (For the uninitiated, Mad Men is a show set in a Manhattan ad agency in the early '60s. Betty is married to Don Draper, the main character, and she is the women Betty Friedan wrote about in The Feminine Mystique.) Can you name the crimes?

"Like Betty, lots of women were depressed ...because they were stifled creatively and felt trapped by marriage and motherhood. They weren't necessarily "crazy." They were struggling with their identities and yes, self-medicating with booze."

"...but I do sympathize with her because being a suburban mom isn't easy nowadays...I can't imagine how stressful it was in the 1950s-1960s when you were expected to be perfect and have no life outside the confines of your home...and you had to be obedient to a selfish husband like Don."

"Interestingly, Betty Draper ...most certainly is suffering the malaise of the "modern" suburban housewife."

I'd like to argue this point, as my mother *was* one of those suburban housewives.

She wasn't depressed (my father was) she wasn't alcoholic (she would be after my father died, nearlt 40 years later) she *did* have to be obedient to my father, who was very often verbally abusive to all of us.

But when he was not there, she watched her soaps, fed her family, did the laundry, rushed just before my father got home to make it look as if she'd cleaned all day, visited with the neighbors - especially the elderly ones (and ran errands for them - on foot, as she didn't drive, but the grocery store was just down the street) as well as those her own age, and *spent time* (not just "quality time") with her children.

I knew my mother - her favorite color, movie, book (she read a lot too - her library card number was famous at our local branch) singer, actress, flowers, perfume, other things i can't recall right now, as well as her values and beliefs (and the way she protected me from my father, or at least comforted me after).

She was taught that the best thing you could do was to help other people. I admired her in that (if not in that if you were unhappy you should cure it by helping others). She was brought up by nuns after being removed by the state from a crazy mother in a large Catholic family that only grew larger before she got back. (after marriage, she was.. if not Protestant, at least in no way Catholic)

She was into walking and taking vitamins (none of which helped my asthma - though i learned to take lots of pills at once (pantothenic acid is something you *never* want to chew))

My father worked two jobs, so that she could stay home and take care of us. Which she did a very good job of (even if the cleaning was an afterthought (and her cooking wasn't that great - I gained a lot of weight after I left home - perhaps the girls on 90210 have my mother as a cook - i was 105 when I left).

The only thing she didn't teach us was that, for her daughter, the world would not be the same.

I don't think my mother was unhappy as a housewife. I don't remember her aspiring to be anything else (or anything). And I really think she was part of the glue that made good neighborhoods, well- behaved children (who weren't automatons, but were just polite, responsible citizens) and kept the elderly from having to go to nursing homes.

There may still be women like this. I just think my mother's priorities were pretty darn good.

When i was 19, she went back to work, and had no time for us (my brother was 13). I missed her.

When I was 22, the family moved to another state and I did not.

When my father was dying she quit to care for him and didn't go back(though she thought of it). she ran around with her friends for a while and then stopped, and then she watched a lot of tv and read a lot, she drank too much, so that when she started having health issues that affected her balance, we didn't notice, thinking she was drunk.

(at this point i must stop to gripe about Lexie Grey saying she's an ACOA, when her childhood was perfect. just because her father is a drunk *now*, that does *not* put her in that class. ACOA is more developmental, i think. a way to survive learned in childhood. my father was not an alcholic then either - he just blew up like one (something Thatcher and Susan never did - but I bet Ellis did.)

Back to my point - my mother would have said that life is what you make it - and she did good (unlike Betty) cared less for appearances than for good manners and politeness and giving to others, and she made the world a better place, both then, and in children who grew up resposible and not adding to the burdens of others in society (unlike siblings of friends who've done drugs, committed thefts, ended up in jail or unmarried with children they could not support).

Of course, when she chose not to have a funeral (both my parents chose this), all the people who admired her and loved her for all the good she did for them, were upset that they could not gather to praise her, and were angry at *me* but...

Perhaps Betty does feel unfulfilled, but I don't see any aspirations toward any kind of "work" or even "charity" or volunteerism in her (unlike my mother). She only cares about how she looks to others. And more and more, she really does seem a spoiled (or at least needy and damaged) child.

And, as "needy and damaged" goes, Meredith Grey (while perhaps whiny) is a far better (fictional) person than she is - at least *she* always gathers her friends in support of whichever friend needs it most, making a family out of those who are not her blood, while Betty couldn't be bothered with those who *are.* (at least not till they grow up to people who will "shame her" in front of her friends (and btw, where *are* those friends? her neighbors have husbands who cheat too. is she too "image" oriented to even gripe to them?))

Time's up. The crimes are 1) too much information; and 2) seeing everything through the prism of your own experience.  They generally go hand in hand, although occasionally I see one without the other . It's possible to see everything through the prism of your own experience without the TMI, but it's impossible to have the TMI alone. The very nature of TMI means you see everything through The Prism.

I won't go so far as to say that personal experience should never influence  your impressions. It's impossible to be completely objective all the time. But it is possible to interpret fiction subjectively if you accept that very few things are black and white. TMI and The Prism combine to create an even bigger crime - It's All About Me. IAAM with an emphasis on The Prism leads to people being sensitive to the tiniest perceived slight; as well, it's a symptom of severe myopia. "That can't be true because it didn't happen to me/we didn't do it that way in our family/my uncle was in the same situation and this is what happened to him." It's opinion as fact.

IAAM with an emphasis on TMI leads to "Oh my God, I don't want to know this about you." It's irrelevant to the discussion, and it's discussion as therapy. I mean, I know Road Runner is cheaper than counseling, but I wish people could keep at least a few things to themselves. In the worst case, the relevant discussion comes to a screeching halt, either because people don't know what to say (I can sometimes feel the discomfort), or because it results in endless expressions of sympathy. I know I'm being heartless, but please, what does this poster's asthma, or her fluctuations in weight because her mother didn't cook for her when she was 19 years old have to do with Betty Draper's slow, on-screen breakdown because her husband cheats on her and her entire life is a sham? How is this-

When I was 22, the family moved to another state and I did not.

related to anything having to do with Mad Men?

Great fiction always tells the truth, and great characters don't have to be nice people. Instead of watching this brilliant show and learning that truth comes in many forms,  the only thing this poster learns from Mad Men is how much or how little it mirrors her own life. It's television viewing as narcissism.

Burn Notice: Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) is a spy for the US government who gets burned, meaning he's been dropped by the Feds and become persona no grata. His finances have been frozen, no one will tell him why he's been burned, and he's stuck in his hometown of Miami. Unfortunately for Michael, his family is also there. Madeline (Sharon Gless, in all her fabulousness) is Michael's smoking, drinking, poker playing mom, and one after my own heart. She loves her son, but their communication is bad. I think she doesn't actually know what Michael did for a living, but she's smart enough to know it's shady. She's mad at him because he went on a trip and didn't come back for ten years. He just wants her to stay out of his business, for his sanity and her safety. It's not an original role or relationship, but Gless and Donovan make it believable.

Michael has a brother, Nate (Seth Peterson), a get rich quick guy whose relationship with Michael is also strained at times. He was a minor character in the first season, and so far, he's not particularly interesting on his own. Michael's father is absent and has been for a long time. Whether he's dead or he ran off, I'm not sure.

Also in Miama are Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar, who needs to eat about a dozen burgers), his crazy, trigger-happy ex-girlfriend; and Sam, Michael's old friend, an ex spy who saves his own ass by reporting on Michael to the FBI, much to Michael's irritation. They work with him on his weekly "saving some poor schlub from financial ruin/being killed/general disaster" cases that bring in a little cash. 

I haven't decided what I think about Fiona. She can totally take care of herself, and even though I find guns abhorrent in real life, I always love a female character who knows her way around them. There's no gun she can't shoot, and no bad guy who's safe from her. But she's presumptuous about her place in Michael's life, and seems to forget about that "ex" in front of the word "girlfriend". This is, of course, because she still loves him. I know. Big surprise. Other big surprise? He still loves her too. But, you know, they just can't work it out. This could be yet another annoying and done to death plot device, but Donovan and Anwar make it better than it should be. (As a side note, sometime during the first season, Anwar dropped Fiona's Irish accent. It's probably a blessing, because it was really bad. But still. Where did it go?)

And then there's Sam, who is played by none other than Bruce Campbell, that b-movie cult figure who deserves all the adoration he gets. (It's been said that he's not playing Sam, he's playing Bruce Campbell. Which...come on.. I hope that wasn't a complaint.) Sam's retired and just wants to have a good time and get by. If that means he has to rat out his best friend on occasion, he can live with that. He's as loyal to Michael as he can be. To that end, he promised Michael he would only feed the FBI enough information to keep them off everyone's backs.

The Case of the Week is just that. Michael finds out about someone who's in trouble and, through a series of actions that would get pretty much anyone killed if they were performed by real, live actual people, beats the bad guys. Drama, violence and humor ensue.

Semi-spoiler alert: By  the end of the first season, Michael had gotten closer to figuring out burned him, and knows they have a job for him. In the second season opener, we discover his handler is portrayed by Tricia Helfer, former model and the most badass robot ever.

As a bonus, they blow up a lot of shit.

Watch it. The second season premiere was Thursday, July 10. USA Network, Thursdays, 10:00 PM, with repeats throughout the week.

From Monty Python, of course:

Man#2 (Graham Chapman): Grand meal, that was, eh?

Others: Yes, wonderful, yes very good..

Man#2: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau le Shlasseler, eh, Guissay?

Man#3 (Terry Jones): Oh, you're right there, Robidaier.

Man#4 (Eric Idle): Who'd 'ave thought, thirty year ago, we'd all be sitting here drinking Chateau de Shlasseler, eh?

Man#1 (Michael Palin): Aye, in them days we was glad to have the price of a cup of tea!

Man#2: Aye, a cup of cold tea!

Man#4: Without milk or sugar!

Man#3: Or tea!

Man#1: Aye, in a cracked cup and all!

Man#4: Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled-up newspaper!

Man#2: Aye, the best we could manage in those days was to suck on a piece of damp cloth!

Man#3: Aye, but we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

Man#1: Because we were poor! My old dad used to say to me: Money doesn't buy you happiness!

Man#4: Aye, he was right, I was happier then and I had nothing. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.

Man#2: House! You were lucky to live in a house! We had to all live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, half the floor was missing, and were all huddled together in a corner for fear of falling!

Man#3: You were lucky to have a room! We used to 'ave to live in a corridor!

Man#1: Oh, we used to DREAM of living in a corridor. It would have been a palace to us. We used to have to live in an old water tank in a rubbish pit. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House! Huh!

Man#4: Well, when I say house, it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us!

Man#2: We were evicted from our hole in the ground. We had to go and live in a lake!

Man#3: You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us, living in a shoebox in the middle of the road!

Man#1: Cardboard box?

Man#3: Aye!

Man#1: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down at the mill, fourteen hours a day, week in, week out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home, our dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt.

(slight pause)

Man#2: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of damp gravel, work a twenty-hour day at the mill for tuppence a month, and when we got home, our dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

Man#3: Well, of course, we 'ad it tough! We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and lick the road clean with our tongue. We 'ad two bits of cold gravel, and worked a twenty-four hour day at the mill for six or seventy-four years, and when we got home, our dad would slash it to us with a bread knife.

Man#4: Right. I had to get up at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down at the mill and pay the mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our mother and father would kill us and dance on our graves singing Halleluja.

Man#1: Aye, and you try telling young people of today that. And they won't believe you.

Man#4: Aye, they won't!

Brenda Leigh Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) is a Georgia transplant working as Deputy Chief of the Priority Homicide Division in the LA police department.  Assistant Chief of Police Will Pope (J.K. Simmons) is her boss, with whom Brenda was previously involved. Adultery! He's still in love with her. Yes, big surprise. To my relief, she's not quite so enamored of him.

Brenda is temperamental, petulant, demanding and pushy. Departmental cuts and layoffs are for other divisions. Her parents, her boyfriend Fritz (Jon Tenney), and the general happiness of her employees are third to the job. Her cat Kitty, is an unsteady second.

She often refuses to admit she's wrong, and seldom apologizes. What makes her so special as a cop is her unrivaled ability to close a case. (I'd say that Pembleton from Homicide: Life on the Street was a much more riveting interrogator, but that show and The Closer are miles apart. Brenda is unrivaled on the show, not in all of television history.) When she interrogates a suspect, she's a velvet steamroller, using southern charm and  fake sympathy to nail the bastard. Her trademark "thank you" is withering, making anyone from a suspect to a superior feel like they've just been chastised by the school principal.

What makes Brenda so special as a woman is how real she is. She has a mind like a steel trap at work, but her house and her hair are a mess, her purse is a disaster, and she has questionable taste in clothing. She has a weakness for sweets that borders on crazy, she can't cook and she lacks certain social skills. But when Kitty disappeared she actually considered leaving the office to look for her. She's independent but also a daddy's girl. She had an affair with her married boss, coming out the other end scarred but not ruined.

I don't always like Brenda. She's unreasonable and often treats the people around her like underlings. She doesn't understand that other people have a different view or different needs. She forgets that Fritz is possibly the best boyfriend ever. But when she's on a case, her heart is always with the victim and the family. That's why she's so intractable when solving a murder.

And she loves Fritz. Hell, how could she not? He knows her inside and out and still thinks she's the cat's ass. And, Great Holy Mary Mother of God, look at  him. What's not to love?

It's no surprised that things didn't start off well for Brenda when she showed up in LA. Her six-member team is made up of five men and one woman. The men didn't like her because she was an outsider and a woman. Daniels, the only woman, didn't have much to say (she still doesn't, which bugs me to no end. Why is it that the only other female character on the show is never given anything to do?), but her ambivalence was pretty clear, both about the way the men felt about Brenda and about Brenda even being there. (and I give Gina Ravera big props for being able to convey that ambivalence with nothing but a glance). The men on the team put her through the wringer, but by the end of the first season, even Brenda's biggest tormentor, Lt. Flynn, who tried more than once to get embarrass her and get he fired, was ready to take a bullet for her.

The guys on the team are well characterized, much more so than one would expect from these descriptions:  Provenza (G.W. Bailey, who I've loved since I first saw him on MASH.), the not-too-far-from-retirement Lt. Detective who has forgotten more than most cops will ever know, and who I think my mother wants to marry; Detective Andy Flynn, who, despite his change in attitude about Brenda, is still a loudmouth and a jackass; Mike Tao, the highly educated and brilliant Lt. Detective who will take 100 words to explain something when 10 will do; Detective Julio Sanchez, a dark horse (as a friend recently described him) who you'd want with you if you were in an alley at night; and Sgt. David Gabriel, an ambitious young cop who has been Brenda's right arm from the start.

Anyone familiar with J.K. Simmons' work should already know that he always get it right as Assistant Chief Pope. Has he ever gotten it wrong in any role? I won't say that Simmons is under-appreciated, because he's certainly established himself as a respected actor; but I will say that he should be a much bigger star than he is. Pope (the guys call his office The Vatican) is man both frustrated and taken with Brenda. His affection for her as a former girlfriend and respect for her as a cop are apparent, and he's always caught between the requirements of a  bureaucracy and what Brenda demands. Fritz knows her better, but Pope knows how to handle her. And more than anyone else on the show, he's his own person, not just a reflection of Brenda.

As with In Plain Sight, and most summer procedurals, The Closer's Story of the Week is minor compared to the characters. Because it's always about murder, there's a lot of drama, but it can also be hilarious (last year Brenda got into a physical fight with an angry bride, and ended up the "most downloaded woman on the internet").

I've seen the first and third seasons of The Closer, and a few episodes from the second season which, for some unknown reason, none of the rental stores in Durham carry. It's fun, it can be a little gruesome, and it has a great cast of actors and characters.
 
Watch it. Mondays, TNT, 9:00PM, with repeats throughout the week.