TV Makes You Smart

Dear Mad Men: Thank you for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce

It was all so perfect the way it unfolded.  Don's righteous anger at Connie, who really made the whole thing possible by spilling the news.  The first flashback to his father was when he set foot in Sterling Cooper after hearing it.  Was that the moment, then, that he decided to go to Bert?  Was it his remembrance of his father's refusal to let the decisions of others control his destiny, to not be batted around like a ping pong ball that pushed Don into Bert's office?  To successfully goad Bert into action and for it to be believable even though we've always thought that Bert threw in the towel long ago was quite a feat, especially since Bert greeted Don with, "What's so urgent that you had to wake me?"  Roger is next and the first to take advantage of the situation to extract a compliment from Don.  Also, "Join or Die?"  Welcome back, funny Roger!  Lane, who has likely spent weeks ruminating on how close he came to living in India, is ripe for the picking even before Sinjin unknowingly pushes him over the edge.  It was fantastic to see Peggy tell Don what she feels, her no is articulate and shows her insight into what she is to Don.  His threat to go to Kurt and Smitty rolls right off her. When he goes to her apartment she looks at him like she knows she's getting a Draper-moment pitch and she's immune to it.  She is not. Pete and Trudy are brilliant, with Trudy catching on before Pete and Pete's "I'm not really sick."  And he brought Clearasil with him, which may mean they'll be adopting soon, right?  Harry and Pete in the elevator having two different conversations was typical of poor clueless Harry.  Don kicking open the art department was inexplicably great.  And of course Roger calls Joan.  It's perfect.  As were the details of Bert moving his art and Peggy not getting coffee.  Thank you for showing a bit of the aftermath, everyone gossiping and trying to figure everything out the next day, including Paul's disappointment when he sees Peggy's empty office.  All in all, this was an extremely satisfying finale.  It was exciting, suspenseful, funny and poignant.  Thank you. 

Mad Men - The Whole Country is Drinking

America.  We all remember watching TV all day long on 9/11, even when nothing new was being reported.  We watched as talking news heads repeated themselves over and over.  We all looked at each other to see if anyone else had a clue about what should be done.  Do we stay at work?  Is it okay to drive somewhere?  Will stores be open?  What about tomorrow?  When tomorrow came all we could talk about was the day before.  On Mad Men we saw the characters reacting to the national tragedy of their time and we can't help but notice the difference.  Their TVs aren't as nice.

The episode reminded us, as this show often does, that some things never change.  Office buildings are too hot or too cold.  Adults act like children and children understand more than their li'l hearts can bear.  Smart girls sleep with unworthy men.  And some people hate the president.

About Last Night

OMG America.  It appears Don Dick Whitman Draper has real feelings.  And Roger has real monogomy, which we did not see coming.  Meanwhile, Joan practices domestic battery.  Not that he didn't deserve it.  Also, there were asshole pet owners even back in the 60's.

A multitude of bad things happened on Dexter.  Debra's lost and falling apart.  Anton's heart got broken but good.  Rita's had it with Dexter's mysteriousness.  LaGuerta outed her relationship with Batista and he was mad but forgave her and they were adorable again, then her boss told her she has to transfer Batista out of homicide which is bullshit because he's awesome.  Quinn sucks (hee!).  Masuka has feelings.  Dexter knows who the bad guy is but couldn't stop him before he bashed in an innocent victim's head with a framing hammer.  It has a good heft and is versatile.

S**t Talking Tool tried to choke out Hillbilly Tool, but that wasn't enough to violate VH1's Tool Academy code of conduct.  Looks like all that nonsense about getting VH1 out of the gutter has been forgotten.  Good news. 

Go Globetrotters!  We would have been crushed to see them off The Amazing Race.  They're fun.  Our prediction that Megan and Cheyne would be tough to beat but so vanilla no one will care if they win has proven incorrect.  In fact, they are annoying and we will now be actively hoping they fail.

Dear Mad Men: Thank you, I hate you...WTF?

Betty Draper is not an easy woman to like.  She's a terrible mother.  It seems extremely unlikely that she would be able to even spell empathy.  Yet in spite of her beauty her husband cheats on her.  Often and with many different women.  So when the key to Don's secrets first wound up in the laundry last night, I was hoping she wasn't going to find it, even while it was clear she probably would.  But then the amount of damning evidence in that box made me realize that even unlikeable Betty Draper has the right to know these things.  Also, whatever happens next should be extremely interesting.  So thank you, Mad Men for the box of secrets and for Don not covering his tracks.  Also, it was awesome how she waited for him but he doesn't come home enough even to be confronted.

Thank you for Paul's drunken messiness and his insecurities.  And, as always, thank you for Peggy.  In general. 

I hate you for getting me to invest in Don's latest illicit affair.  Although the last scene with her brother in Don's car was quite nice.

WTF?  Cooper Sterling for sale again?

About Last Night

Zev and Justin were our faves on Amazing Race and they are out of it in a heartbreaker episode.  Lance and Keri are still in it and continue to hate each other and annoy the rest of us.

Another fave, Sal, was treated horribly by Mad Men.  Why did it have to happen?  Our dear, dear Sal.  At least it looked like he was cruising at the end. 

Curb Your Enthusiasm was hilarious.  Christian Slater fit right in to the attitude of the show.  Suzie yelling at Larry and kicking him out of her house was awesome.

About Last Night

Curb Your Enthusiasm is as funny and uncomfortable as it has ever been.  The yelling, the awkward situations, the verbal dissections of what is and isn't appropriate are brilliant.  Catherine O'Hara was so much fun as Funkhouser's crazy sister. 

Bored to Death's premiere was weird and tried too hard, but we found it easy to watch.  The influence of the hard-boiled detective genre is there throughout and the contrasts are interesting.  Phillip Marlowe spent a lot of time in shady flop motels, but he never danced goofily through the lobby of one.  Know why?  Because it's stupid.

Mad Men asked the age-old question: Is it gay to get mani-pedis?  This show doesn't often make us laugh out loud but Roger was on fire last night.  "The British are coming!" was perfect and his honest shock at finding himself left off the org chart was actually quite touching.  Guy MacKendrick's future of endless possibility being destroyed by office partying was jarring.  But then it was inappropriately funny, as were all the jokes at his expense.  Evidently degrees from Cambridge and The London School of Economics are useless when you only have one foot and will never golf again.  Meanwhile, Betty's parenting continues to suck and our hearts break for Joan.  It's nice that she and Don had some time together.  A lovely scene.

Tool Academy is a thing of peculiar beauty.  Last night we saw a tool covered from collarbone to pubic bone in Nair For Men.  That tool later explained he doesn't leave the house unless he's perfect.  The other tools were ecstatic to have learned this effective manscaping technique.  Then some of them cried because underneath the doucheyness they're full of pain and insecurities.  It's amazing. 

Sterling Cooper contributes to the unemployment rate

I have spent all this time hoping Sal would get some man-on-man love and here we go, first episode and it happens.