We discover why Pete was described as being good with people when we find out how well connected he is on his mother’s side. Is he a bit dim as well as ambitious? He failed at both attempts to be in control. I think this series is about the struggle that men and women face in a world of changing gender expectations. The fact that Pete’s importance comes via his mother is continued through to his wife getting her own way. He thinks he should be the boss but he isn’t.
Don’s boss looked like Colonel Saunders.
The scenes between Betty and Glen, Helen’s son, were creepy and sad. I’m not sure she should have given him the lock of hair because that seems inappropriately encouraging.
I have decided that January Jones is not a smoker.
This series feels like reading a novel or watching a (really long) film. I have no idea how much is made up on the fly and how much is pre-planned.
Girls grow up faster than boys do
Girls grow up faster than boys
Girls grow up faster than boys do
So, baby, I’m old enough for you
Once you used to date my big sister
Now, baby, she’s too old for you
Won’t you take a look at me now
You’ll be surprised at what you see now
I’m everything a girl should be now
36-21-35
I don’t really know where to start but any analysis of the words ought to leave a skeezy taste in your mouth.
However, what really gets me is that this is a Goffin and K…, thank goodness, not King but a Goffin and Keeler song. Gerry Goffin is a lyricist and so he is responsible for these words and those of “He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)”. I understand the background to “He Hit Me” but to translate the complexity of a troubled relationship into a three minute pop song is sometimes beyond the scope of talented wordsmiths like Goffin. I do rather wish he hadn’t bothered trying.
Anyhow, Keeler co-wrote the theme to the charming Bewitched starring the equally charming Elizabeth Montgomery.
PS On the other hand:
I can recall the time
When I wasn’t ashamed
To reach out to a friend
And now I think I’ve got
A lot more than
A skipping rope to lend
Andy and I struggled to the end of the second season and we won’t be back for more.
Dull and, bizarrely, considering its subject matter, unimaginative with awful plotting and glaring errors in logic.
The series has managed to kill my liking for Greg Grunberg and is also responsible for the following:
it managed to make a decent actor (Ali Larter) struggle in an unforgiving role that stunk: Nikki/Jessica/Gina
it reintroduced Sylar who was hard enough work for me to care about in the first season
it killed off Candice in the most pathetic way considering her power
Irish scenes of excruciating quality
Caitlin and her faux Irish accent and her boring romance with Peter
West and his creepy stalking which, I think, we weren’t supposed to find creepy
Claire’s lack of progression as a character
it killed off DL (the fab Leonard Roberts)
it gave Peter too many powers but conveniently forgot what powers they were if the plot demanded that power not be used (e.g. to read Adam’s mind, to walk through doors)
casting the iconic Nichelle Nichols and then not use her
it made Kristen Bell’s character unbearable to start with
it did nothing with Ando when he and Hiro had such chemistry the season before
and I haven’t even mentioned Hiro, Noah, Mohinder, Nathan and the twins
A relatively undramatic episode but we learned some interesting snippets.
Don may be a Dick (actually we discover when he does the dirty on his daughter during her party that he is definitely a dick).
Pete was quite likeable but I suspect that won’t last.
Betty is a nice person who doesn’t indulge in the dissing of Helen (and she did invite the divorcee over after all) and went to Bryn Mawr which goes a long way to explaining why she can’t pull her rubber gloves off.
Is this the last of Rachel? Or will she succumb to the Don charm? I hope not even though I like her character and Maggie Siff in the part.
The Chinese people in the office joke seemed flat both on screen and in my reaction to it. I don’t really get it. Though I did enjoy Rachel negotiating the chicken as she leaves the office.
I thought the Lady Chatterley’s Lover scene was very funny with great delivery of the “there’s a few good parts, that’s all…” line by Christina Hendricks.
It is notable that the most attractive characters are the most modern so I liked Helen.
It meandered to a close with Don’s moping not particularly gripping me.
Not, I suspect, anyone’s favourite episode and hopefully the worst.
As a poster at TWOP said we were sold a musical comedy and for two acts it was one and then in the third it became a tragedy - a tragedy that felt rotten - now what we want and what we need are two different things - however, I didn’t need this, I didn’t enjoy it and it ultimately failed to work for me.
JW has lost my devotion - Buffy and Firefly were so great that I have spent my time watching the quite frankly poor Angel in search of those nuggets of cleverness and humour but they are few and far between. If Dollhouse doesn’t engage me after several episodes I’ll do a Pushing Daisies on it - life is too short to watch material that I don’t really like even if it is written by Joss Whedon.
And why was Penny’s death so damned passive? Might I be happier if she had died doing something? Might I be happier if Tara had died doing something?
We find out immediately that Willow is in a bad place when she complains to Amy-rat that Tara left her “for no good reason”. That makes it clear that she is in no state to change her behaviour particularly when the next thing she does is de-rat Amy. And that was stupidly and lazily easy: Amy should not have been a rat for so long. No wonder that later, when she has had time to think, she gets vengeful.
(Bloody hell the Mac advertising was unsubtle.) I can hardly bear to watch Willow’s behaviour in the denial scene. People do behave badly but it’s so horrible to watch.
The conversation about Willow in the Magic Box reminds me of this entertaining tangled synthesis. I love conversations that are either about something else or two things at the same time (not in real life mind because that sort of thing is seen whizzing miles over my head) and Buffy’s horror at the “seductive” word is very funny: “but we can’t assume that everybody’s getting seduced, you know, sometimes…” [they are]
My least favourite five minutes of BtVS consist of Willow and Amy being unspeakable in the Bronze and Buffy and Spike smashing up a house (and, OMG, you can hear the zip! – somehow that makes it all even ickier). It pains me to see Buffy enter this (literally) destructive and rather vile relationship.
Sooo, if I don’t like Willow and I don’t like Buffy and Spike’s relationship then I don’t like the show? Hell no, it’s still BtVS, it’s still as funny as ever, it’s still as fabulously acted as ever (for example, SMG on the phone to Spike is hilarious), it is still as involving as ever and Amber Benson is still in it – from now I was a credit hawk – ironically I almost missed the credit sequence when I rushed upstairs for a wee – Andy paused it for me because he was delighted and he didn’t know (but I did…).
They really slapped the make up on Amber in the lot of shake scene and in her brown/beige clothes she was borderline orange. However, hold the front page, but I genuinely like Willow’s outfit at the Bronze. The vest is particularly nice. Finally on the shallow notes, does Spike wear that chain all the time? It’s not nice.
I have said before and will say it again: Elizabeth Anne Allen is great, notably in her line delivery; as in one of the best delivered exchanges on BtVS :
“How’ve you been?”
“Rat. You?”
“Dead.”
“Oh.”
My problem with the Trio isn’t the actors who are super in their roles or their banter (which is geekily entertaining) it’s just that the concept is, as Anya says, “lame”.
Which brings me to Anya who is Anya great in this episode, the one who is forthright, honest and right. I wish she was always as well written.
Spike thinks he’s fixed and the first thing he does is try to kill someone. A real hero. I’m afraid I didn’t spot any attempt to wind himself up for the kill – he was just monologuing.
Another good episode although the series doesn’t seem as subtle as I expected it to be: gay Sal still grates and January Jones is being asked to wear her unhappiness like a badge.
I’m a little surprised that on the cusp of the sixties that a woman would be expected to get over the death of her mother in a mere three months though apparently this is what Betty ought to have done.
Don’s purchase of a watch for Betty seemed the height of crassness but that’s par for the course at Sterling Cooper. I’m interested that ad men are being portrayed as boorish oafs who say out loud and often how little they know or care about women (and indeed anything else) in an industry that is supposed to understand how people tick in an effort to sell them something.
I’m not keen on Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes’ name in Vertigo (1958)) - she hasn’t interested me yet.
I can’t wait for Peggy to tell Joan where to shove it. I assume that will happen in the future - it had better! I like Peggy a lot more in this episode - except for the inexplicable Pete fixation - she is now more clearly our character to root for.
Andy and I wondered if Paul (based entirely on the Twilight Zone reference) was going to be the only nice man in the office but he turned out to be a “nice guy(R)” instead.
I am practically unspoiled regarding Mad Men and so I thought I would blog my random thoughts regarding each episode as we watch them.
The first episode was promising though I do have a major problem straightaway in that it is going to have to be about more than advertising to maintain my interest past the first few episodes. The problem with Studio 60 was that it was about a sketch show and after three interminable episodes I just could not bring myself to care about the characters agonising over its weekly production (although it was Dave Mason’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” at the end of the third episode that really sealed the deal).
It looked authentic although there perhaps wasn’t the right amount of fug that so much smoking would have produced and certainly the stripper looked like her body was all hers.
The closeted gay man was rather laughably overdone: it was so obvious as soon as he produced the drawing of his neighbour. The other executives seemed more realistic and except for a bit of toning down of the overt sexism they could be modern characters.
I hope that Joan (Christina Kendricks) is actually a Saffron like character - subverting from within rather than genuinely believing it all.
I assumed that Peggy was going to be the character we were naturally going to root for. The nice girl who was not going to succumb to the societal norms of the time. Instead she did take creepy Pete into her room after being rejected by Don.
I liked Rachel - mainly because she was the most modern woman in the programme - which brings me to the accusations of misogyny and sexism I do know that Mad Men has been accused of. My first reaction is that I don’t think the sexism (misogyny is far too strong a word) and the other isms have been presented in a Life on Mars way which, far too often for me, felt like it relished being as sexist and racist as it could. I think, so far, Mad Men, is trying to show how it was in many workplaces.
Don is intriguing: he already seems well-rounded and I want to know how his relations with the women in his life proceed. I guessed very belatedly that he was married.
Vincent Kartheiser as Pete looks so young and also a bit like Christopher Walken and I hope we are never supposed to like him.
I think Rachel’s line about hard it is to be a man may be the most significant line of the series.
I felt a bit uncomfortable watching it because it was so sexist and that made me fiddle with my toes a lot.
As a first episode/pilot, I liked it more than Damages or Heroes or Studio 60 or Ugly Betty or Battlestar Galactica so I am hopeful for the next few programmes. However, I loved the first episode of Pushing Daisies and I eventually gave that up.
Taken down for now. It seems that the various Dollhouse trailers are being removed from YouTube for copyright infringement. That’s right, free advertising is being removed for copyright infringement. It is rather stupid. However, thirty seconds after writing the previous three sentences I found the Fox YouTube channel and it all makes sense.
