Mad Men: Reflecting on the end of the season

I know a lot of you like me have been glued to the couch on Sunday nights watching "Mad Men." It's been an incredible season--dark and portentous with a few rays of hilarity and hope. I thought last's nights finale was a pitch-perfect hour of TV and I've avoided my usual Monday-Morning indulgence of reading "Mad Men" open threads so I could jot down my thoughts and ask you yours.

SPOILERS BELOW.

(my how they've grown since season 1)

I thought the episode was marked by Don and Betty's inverted efforts to build a new life for themselves. Don's new venture looks like a repeat, but is in fact an uncharted course; Betty's plans look new but it's going to trap her in the same prison she was in before.

Don's new company has the same DNA as the old one: the same core people he's been working and fighting with forever with a name that starts out the same as well--but the reality is very, very different. He's abased himself in front of everyone: Sterling, Peggy, Pete, and has to acknowledge them as equals. Now he's played his cards of telling these colleagues exactly why he admires them-- and needs them--rather than keeping his little "does Don like me?" guessing-game power-trip game going. This awareness and openness is clearly spurred on by what was happening at home, *and as people on the internets reminded me, his memory of the grisly fate that befell his dad when he "abandoned the collective." So Don succeeded with Peggy and Roger where he failed with Betty. And as Peggy's retort to Roger about the coffee shows, Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce is going to be a very different place from the original SC.

Meanwhile Betty, who is rightly furious at her secretive womanizer of a husband, thinks she's found her fairytale prince and her ticket to happiness and freedom. But with a protective, overly-chivalrous guy who wants to do exactly what Don did--put her on a pedestal and provide for her--she may be doomed to a repeat performance. What Betty needs is not another father figure, but the ability to let go of that little-girl persona and grow up.

As broken-hearted as I was by Betty's decision, and especially its effect on the kids, I also felt a flood of relief that this tense standoff between the two of them was over. And I felt poignantly the tragedy of an era, and two people, who wouldn't allow, wouldn't even consider, of Don's warm and natural parenting instincts to ever influence or take precedence over Betty's horrible childishness at home.

So what did you think? And what are your hopes/predictions for next season?

Little Dorrit Cleans Up At The Emmys (#littledorrit)

Weren't you all just chuffed to see the miniseries which we all used to watch in the dear departed days now long forgotten (Clenham and Doyce) win so many awards?

Charleybrown at Enchanted Serenity of Period Films has the breakdown of Emmy wins, while my tweep Deane aka Kafkatronic points out that more women-behind-the-screen came out to accept wins for "Little Dorrit' than practically all the American shows put together. Good point! She's a damn fine woman with no bigad nonsense about her.

Here's how to rent it at Netflix.

And learn more about it/ buy it at the PBS store.

And be sure to count to five-and-twenty whenever you are vexed!

PS. Does anyone out there have a recording 0r youtube link of the opening credits music which played so hauntingly everytime someone won an award last night?

Lost in Austen

UPDATE: Friend of the EBC gettsr offers her own interpretation of "LIA," in which she delves into the postmodern implications of the miniseries. We must be psychic.


I'd heard lots about this over the fangirl network when it initially aired and despite the snark, I decided to watch the last 3 episodes, which were re-run on Ovation a few weekends ago.

For those who don't know the premise--Amanda Price, modern girl and Jane fanatic, steps into Pride and Prejudice, switching places with Eliza Bennet who enters modern London. Amanda finds the characters not quite as solid as Jane Austen prepares her for--they seem to have minds of their own. She desperately tries to keep things running as Pride and Prejudice would have her, meanwhile struggling with her own feelings about Mr. Darcy. But when zombies show up at Netherfield err, Mr. Collins gets hitched with Jane, the book goes out the window and our modern heroine, Ms. Price, is left trying to keep things from being a colossal catastrophe, to say nothing of as smooth as an Austen plot.

Well, to sum it up: the dialogue and action are so far from period-appropriate it's a joke, there are all kinds of weird Shakespearean and other random literary and philosophical allusions thrown in for no reason, and absolute havoc is wreaked on one of the most perfectly crafted, if not the most perfectly crafted, plot in literary history. Also, the characters travel in their wagons from Netherfield to Longbourn to Rosings to Pemberly and back again so quickly as to render it absurd, and the plot moves just as briskly. It's a hot mess.

But it still works, it really does. It works because the actors are heartfelt and give sweet performances, particularly the hunky (and I mean hunky) Eliot Cowan as a somewhat more earthy Darcy, Jemima Rooper as Amanda Price, and the exquisite Tom Riley as a most rascally and loveable Wickham. And it's a meditation on our fictional friends, the characters we think we know and understand, who, if given flesh and blood, might be much more slippery than we think.

Any way, it's worth a diverting, distracting, chuckle-worthy view for those who don't mind their pristine classics being trampled on in the name of fun and entertainment and a little philosophizing, too.

(Warning: spoiler-iffic video)

Period Drama Ain't Dead

Via enchanted serenity of period films, the BBC reports that "Gosford Park" scribe Julian Fellowes (with a name like that, this career is clearly his destiny) is penning a new country-house period drama for ITV1.

Here's the deets, "Set in 1912, Downton Abbey will portray the lives of the Crawley family and the servants who work for them."

I, for one, am excited.

Can I get a show of hands? Are you guys "Mad Men" fans?

(my Mad Men avatar that doesn't resemble me)

Dear readers,

I've been doing a lot of mad-men obsessing, reading, writing and freaking in anticipation of the premiere. (My post at the Jewish Daily Forward .com about my obsession w/ Rachel Menken: http://tinyurl.com/mc3dkt plus a "salon" at RHRealitycheck here http://tinyurl.com/orfm83)

I was wondering if any of my regular posse of readers are fans of the show and would be interested in regular Don Draper blogging here on Sundays/Mondays. Or should we save that regular TV-talk for the return of Masterpiece?

Miss Marple--Your Reactions?

Now that the four "Marple" mysteries have been aired and digestsed, I offer my take. I thought they declined in quality til the last one was a bit absurd. But on the whole they were delicious fun. The first, "A Pocketful of Rye" was the most quintessential: manor house, debauched family, intrigue, wills, etc etc. The second, "Murder is Easy" involving an unbelievable spate of crime in a small and quaint village, was almost as delightful with a terrific cast of who's who's--but the huge body count was a bit disconcerting. The third, "They Do It With Mirrors" was well-acted and had a great central group of characters but veered towards the bizarre and I didn't like the tragic ending. As for the final ep, "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?". Well what can I say--it took campy mystery to a whole new level. It was definitely the weakest. But it didn't spoil the tenor of the bunch--Julia McKenzie rocked.

So that was my twitter-like take on the series. What did you all think?

Miss Marple

We caught the first Miss Marple last night-- "A Pocketful of Rye" guest-starring EBC hero du jour Mr. Darcy Arthur Clenham Matthew MacFayden in a silly mustache as a decently-intelligent inspector (though no match for Marple, of course).
"Pocketful"also featured Elinor Dashwood Hattie Morahan in a minor role, as well as Freddy Honeychurch Rupert Graves as the prodigal son of the deceased patriarch, home from Africa just in time to see the inspectors swarm in to solve his father's murder.

As in many Christie novels, the murder(s) echo a nursery rhyme, but as to be expected in the hands of Dame Agatha there are a number of twists along the way that belie the rhyme's seeming simplicity and reveal the depths of human psychological murkiness, or something like that. You know why AC rocks.... I'm tired! It's been a long 4th of July weekend!

Summing it all up, it was an atmospherically-accurate adaptation of a good book that I'm pretty sure I read :)... Anyway anyone else watching "Six by Agatha?" And did you like this ep or were you too distracted by Arthur Clenham's facial hair?

Bill Compton > Edward Cullen

Here is the new True Blood "teaser." The show starts up again in a month:

As you may or may not know, the series is loosely based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris, which are supposed to be wildly addictive.

I know it's a loose adaptation, but I'm impressed with the general badassness that Harris and series creator Allen Ball have granted to heroine Sookie. While Bill Compton, her southern-gentleman vampire beau, may be kind of Cullenish, Sookie's way cooler, spunkier, and far more eager eager to murder bad guys by stabbing them with shovels than Bella Mary-Sue Swan ever would be. And for that I say thank you!

Last Night's "Lear"--Pics+ Your Thoughts?

I only caught some of the Ian McKellen/Romola Garai King Lear last night. I saw the scenes where Regan and Goneril blind poor Gloucester and the ensuing scenes up until Cordelia reunites with Lear, and then I tuned back in for the end. I thought it was excellently acted if a bit draining (shocking, fellowette! emotionaly drained by KING LEAR? It's such a happy play ;)

McKellen was wonderful. I couldn't hear some of his lines, but he really delivered a tour de force performance and the scene at the end where he carries his daughter out in a reverse Pieta never loses its shock value.

So what did you think if you caught more of it than I?

"Big Love" Season Finale Open Thread--What Did You Think?

I'm not sure that any of my regular readers are big fans of the show, but I know my friends and family are, so I thought I'd put this up in case any of you have thoughts on the last ep. I'm going to reserve my thoughts for the comments so I don't spoil it, but what a great season it's been. Dark, but great.

So if you have thoughts to contribute, slap 'em up below. Otherwise, next Sunday Night it's Little Dorrit time. Also The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is premiering soon, and I adore the book series by Alexander McCall Smith, so it should be an exciting adaptation.

Mad Men: Are Don and Peggy the Dorothea and Lydgate of TV?

Two strong intelligent characters, male and female, who are intellectually gifted, determined to make something "more" of themselves, but would never be romantically linked because of their wrongheaded decisions when it comes to love and marriage.

There's little sexual tension between them, but they are the most compelling people in their world, and they live parallel lives. And you can't help but wonder: what could they have accomplished as a couple if they had met earlier and fallen in love?

I'm convinced that Peggy Olsen and Don Draper on "Mad Men" are like Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate in Middlemarch--characters whose union is close to impossible, but the possibility of which nonetheless hovers over all the goings-on in their world. Like George Eliot, Matthew Weiner critiques the idea of marriage as a social ideal rather than a down-to-earth partnership.

Of course Lydgate and Dodo want to change the world, while Don and Peggy just want to write some damn good copy, but on the other hand they do want to to change their world by infusing it with creative energy.

Thoughts?

The Other Sunday Night

The competition for the 9pm Sunday-night slot is going to be intense in March as "Big Love" and all the other HBO Goodies compete for my attention with "David Copperfield" (whose airing times I can't find yet. I will KILL them if they don't show it locally) and "Little Dorrit." OF course, with all the benefits of modern technology--online episodes! On-demand channels! a girl who loves melodrama set in 19th century Britain AND modern day polygamist Utah won't have to choose.

Anyway, for those of you who are huge big love fans like me, here is my feminist analysis.

Please, Sir, can I Have Some More Oliver Twist?

[+ a bonus Oscars wrap-up]

So now that the dust has settled, what did my fair readers think of the conclusion of Oliver Twist?  As documented, I thought the ending was very strong, particularly the Nancy and Rose stuff and I didn't mind the way Fagin's downfall was made way more sympathetic and the anti-semitism of the times was revealed.

Last week the response was fairly positive. Did it remain so or did the creative license at the end ruin it for folk? 

***

And if you didn't watch Oliver, what did you think of the Oscars? I thought they were fun at the beginning and end, but that hour in the middle with all the tech awards was a major dead zone. blah. And much as I adore Kate Winslet and she's a fave literary heroine onscreen (did you hear her shout out EBC faves Emma Thompson AND Peter Jackson?) I thought her speech was upstaged by Sean Penn's truly gracious and far-reaching words.

Live-Blogging PBS' "Wuthering Heights," Installment II, (part 2)

• And everything is falling apart. Cathy is histrionic, Heathcliff has gone from man to monster, Hindley is waving a gun all over the place. Edgar is tyrannical and conventional. And everyone reveals their worst selves! Emily Bronte is merciless.
• Here come some vital exchanges:
• Nelly remarks on the fact that Cathy won't eat, which is a super important metaphoricaly--her self-starvation is her way of rebelling against the ties that bind by punishing herself (or the part of herself that is aligned with the strictures of the social-patriarchal order?).
• And Cathy longs to be a "savage" again...to no longer be stuck in her gilded cage but to be wild, to be one with Heathcliff once more.
• Cathy runs out onto the moors in the rain calling Heathclif's name. He hears her, he finds her!
• And just when you think they are both horrible people and deserve nothing, they have a tender scene in the rain revealing their primal connection. "There's no Edgar, there's no Hindley, there's just you and I," he says.
  
• On her deathbed, Cathy asks that her child not be too tame. Oh man, if this book is not a giant FU to the patriarchy I shall eat my bonnet.
  
• Hindley, pointing a gun at Heathcliff, tells the story about how Cathy asked for a "whip" from her dad as a child and got Heathcliff instead. But of course, he is her whip--the weapon she uses against the world, the part of herself that exacts a brutal revenge on those who subdue her wildness, who tame her.
  
• And when Isabella encounters her brother, he reveals himself to be just as cruel as Heathcliff, totally spurns her. Of course, his wife IS departing this earthly realm and she loves another dude, so one might be inclined to cut him some slack. Who am I kidding, Edward is a !@#$t..
  

...

• And Cathy is dead. Heathcliff does NOT bang his forehead on the tree whilst she is dying, which is disappointing. But he does talk to her corpse, quite intimately. And here comes his big line, his "I am Heathcliff" moment.
• wait for it, wait for it, wait for it,
• and here it comes...
• I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT MY LIFE, I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT MY SOUL.

...

• 15 years later and Heathcliff is exacting his revenge by forcing emo-Linton Heathcliff to marry baby Cathy. See you in the next liveblog thread!
  

Wuthering, Wuthering, Wuthering Heights

[Just imagine this post's title sung by Kate Bush and the repetition will make sense]

So this is my long-awaited (by me, anyway) review of Part I of ITV/Masterpiece Classic's Wuthering Heights starring Tom Hardy, Charlotte Riley, and the dude who played Guppy from Bleak House. First I'll go over things I liked and didn't like, and then--like Heathcliff in the graveyard--I'll dig a wee bit deeper.

Aspects that I appreciated:

• The sets and filming. The Grange and Heights were 90-95% entirely as I imagined them. I thought they evoked what they were supposed to evoke quite well.

• The accents--I loved the clipped roll of the characters' Northern English accents and they reminded me of North and South, which is definitely a good thing.

• The sex--fornication on the moors can never be wrong, if the love is true.

• Tom Hardy--he was a hot, fascinating, mess of a Heathcliff. Interesting to look at, almost sympathetic in my mind, despite his endless quest for vengeance. AND let's get to the crux of things: he banged his head on the wall BEFORE CATHY EVEN DIED. Now that's devotion. Are we going to get another episode of frenzied head-banging against a treetrunk when the sad event occurs? These are the questions that keep me up at night, readers.

• Isabella Linton--This Isabella has a sass-mouth, and I like it.
  

• Necrophilia--Stop judging. He didn't want to sleep with her corpse, he just wanted to cuddle.

• Linton Heathcliff--The frail, consumptive Linton Heathcliff reimagined as a whiny emo dude. I can dig it.
  

Aspects about which I was less passionate:

• Mumbling--There was a bit too much of it. E. Bronte's characters shouldn't mumble, they're too melodramatic. THEY SHOULD EN-UN-CI-ATE THEIR BUR-NING DE-SIRES AND RAGE.
  

• The moors-- good, but too sunny. Wither were the clouds? The snowstorms? The external manifestations of our sundered lovers' turmoil?

• The sex-- I am all about the passion between H and C, but I take issue with how quickly it started in this version. There's a certain air of chastity to the characers' early union that is I think vital to Bronte's meaning. H and C are supposed to flee to the grange because Hindley's canoodling session makes them uncomfortable. And Hindley's canoodling makes them uncomfortable because the threat of sexuality between them is the first hint of their impending separation. I think this aspect was somewhat included in this film--in the sense that after they "lay" together they had this big break and Cathy started "entertaining" Edgar-- but still. The make-outs started too early, is all I'm saying.

• Cathy's looks--The part was very well-acted, but to me, Cathy's weird outfits and her face both felt kind of modern. I feel like Charlotte Riley belongs in a pair of jeans or a power suit, and also, it was hard to stomach her in those cleavage get-ups post-sojourn at Thrushcross Grange without laughing at the excessive boobage.
  

Overall Verdict

It appears that audiences are quite divided on their views of this production (this is based on my persual of the blogsophere.) In fact, even my family is torn; My mom thoroughly enjoyed it, my grandmother thought it was a piece of crap. Well folks, I'm coming down on mom's side: sorry grandma!

I don't think this is the definitive version by any means, (I wonder if there can be a definitive version of such a slippery novel) but I felt that it had a lot going for it. This "WH" was more than watchable, it touched on almost all the crucial themes, moods and characters, and made the book feel relevant. Most importantly, the emotions I felt while watching the film recalled the emotions I felt when I first really learned to appreciate the book: horror and grief at Heathcliff's unfair lot as a child and young man, anger at Cathy's betrayal, sickening regret mixed with perverse fascination as Heathcliff embarks on his campaign of revenge, and a weird mix of hope and disinterest in the fate of the younger generation, who fall so much under the shadows of their larger-than-life parents. It made me go back to my lit crit and think about the book in contemporary contexts, and for that I am thankful. Also, there was a lot of sex, which I may have mentioned.

All in all, well done to the folks at ITV.*

*Now I hear from the intertubes that there's some approaching blasphemy in the second part that may discomfit me/rob me of the good vibes I'm getting from this adaptation. I say, bring it on! Why, you ask? Because no literary-adaptation sin could be worse than the "snog" at the end of 2005's "Love, Actually, and Pride and Prejudice." So unless this miniseries ends with Heathcliff wearing stupid knee-breeches and showing off his calves while he strokes Cathy's decaying skeleton (who wants him, incidentally, to call her the 'goddess divine') and murmurs "Mrs. Heathcliff, Mrs. Heathcliff, Mrs. Heathcliff" in front of the giant reflecting pool that they have built in front of Wuthering Heights' stables, then I am not afraid.**

**I may eat my words.

Cultural Consumption: Twitter-Style

I'm enjoying the whole tweet medium tremendously. So I thought, given that awards season is upon us, I'd do some movie and TV series reviews with a shortened, twitter-inspired aesthetic in mind and catch you up on what I've been consuming.

Movies.

Milk is by far my favorite of the bunch. Why is the most brilliantly acted, well-filmed, and politically relevant film of the season being ignored by award-giving bodies? ding ding ding! Because Hollywood is homophobic.

Slumdog Millionaire's Dickensian opening sequences are great, but then this beautifully shot movie devolves into weird cliched gangster flick. Not sure I get all the hype, but I enjoyed it enough.

Frost/Nixon was the perfect "fun-serious" film. The two leads were great and Ron Howard's big time Hollywood-style direction fit the content like a glove.

Revolutionary Road--Leo and Kate transcended a stylized script and delivered bang-up performances, particularly Leo actually. But it's a painful subject. Very painful.

Rachel Getting Married and The Wrestler and Last Chance Harvey I wantz to see them.

Television Shows

Mad Men finished season 1, starting season 2. Still one of the best shows around, but why oh why does Don not hang on to poor Rachel Menken? She is the most badass female Jewish character eva.

Rome Season 2 Super, super, super violent but delicious. I have this weird feeling a lot of these characters are not going to make it ;)

Friday Night Lights season 3. The best show on television finished its third (last?) season with a heartbreaking, uplifting, and sadly realistic bunch of episodes. I think this may have been one of the best seasons of TV ever. Tv gods, PLEASE BRING IT BACK FOR A FOURTH SEASON. PLEASE. PLEASE.

What have you been consuming, readers?

Golden Globes

I'm live-blogging the Golden Globes over on Twitter, if you're watching. I'll be focusing of course, on EBC lit-adaptation favorites like Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, and more.

I like the teevee

I've been meaning to write a "cultural consumption" post full of inelegant reviews to catch you/my up on everything I've been consuming since the 'oliday season came upon us... but the only thing I've really been doing is watching (excellent) TV. My reading of Little Dorrit has been suspended by a book review I had to do, and my vow to see a lot of movies is on hold til the vacation--which incidentally, couldn't come sooner.

So I've been watching True Blood (the whole first season) Friday Night Lights (the new season that's airing on directv now and will be on NBC soon) and Mad Men (starting season 1). They are all so so so excellent.

FNL is definitely my favorite because the characters--a bunch of Texas teens-- have become so beloved in my life. The show makes me cry and laugh in every single episode and this season it's gone back to being about the dramas of everyday life. It's lost all the desire to be soapy, and managed to stay gut-wrenching because life is gut wrenching. I can't recommend the show enough.

True Blood is stylized and gory. Very gory. But it's a lot of fun once you get past episode 4. The heroine is way more empowered than Twilight's, but the appeal is the same. Dark, undead hero who falls for our heroine because he sees her oddity as a special gift. Heroine torn between desire for hero and fear of his powers. Second love interest who is "safer" + also supernatural but less sexy. Think of it as Twilight for the non-mormon, non pre-teen set. Aside from the primary romance, the supporting characters are interesting and three-dimensional and very profane :).

Mad Men, the 50s ad-world drama, is really mesmerizing. The characters and scenes are totally stuck in my head after only three episodes of tense meetings, endless cigarettes, bed-hopping and the kind of sexual harassment that used to be called "banter." I can't wait to catch up on more. I have a theory about Don Draper being like a beautiful woman in a classic adultery novel (a.k.a a male Emma, Anna, or Hester, but I have to chew on it for a bit.) Also, I can't believe my parents grew up in that era! It really explains the 60s.

I really think TV has eclipsed movies these days in terms of the number of really really high-quality offerings. Thanks, David Chase!

[That being said, the Twilight movie was awesome. Campier than the book, a less zombie-ish heroine, a romance that didn't feel quite as disturbing and wrong. ]

It's been a great month for Telly...

First the Olympics. Then the LOTR three night extravaganza. Now the Democratic National Convention.

And I have to say, even though I'm a hard-core political junkie, give me swimmers, sprinters or hobbits over politicians any day. Blah. (No, seriously, Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton rocked their speeches and I love them. But blah.)

On another note, the movies' airing combined with my Twilight orgy has led to the perfect climate in which to re-read LOTR. I haven't read the saga start to finish in (gulp) seven years, since my Freshman year in college when Fellowship came out on the big screen. Since then, the movies have replaced the books when I need my quick fix of Middle Earth. But for whatever reason, I've gotten anxious to re-familiarize myself with the backstory of all the characters and just geek out.

So I can't wait for that! I have a queue of books though. I just finished Daphne, the latest Bronte/DuMaurier novel-spawn, and I have a Binchy book and The Historian waiting for me. I'm hoping to hit Tolkein running around mid-September. It will be glorious!

Olympic fevah.

I've been so caught up in the Olympics, readers, I've barely had time to watch any of my regular stupid reality shows or fake-news-comedy shows or cable talking-head rants.

Sometimes I wonder if the Olympics are like the official sports-for-dorks, like me. I mean, you don't have to know anything about the sports or have followed them to appreciate the immediate drama of a swimming race or high jump competition or gymnastics final. Plus, you get to enjoy the rigid structure and arcane rules of a lot of these obscure sports, which definitely has a dork/bookwormy appeal, doesn't it?

Regardless, I love it like whoah. Bring on the track and field!