Really Want to See 'Waiting for Superman'

I wish this new, critically acclaimed documentary, Waiting for Superman -- about how the U.S. public educational system is failing many of its students (it's getting great reviews) -- was opening to a wider release. (It opens tomorrow.) It's not playing in the theaters closest to my town, so I'll have to drive a bit to catch it.

I just know that I'll emerge from the theater all fired up. The question is, what to do with all that emotion.

Notes on Pop Culture: Sally Can't Watch 'Mad Men,' Cam & Mitch Kiss & 'Parenthood' Really Solid

Image credit: AMC

Sally Can’t Watch Mad Men

How much do I love reading stories like this? The parents of 10-year-old actress Kiernan Shipka, who plays Sally Draper on Mad Men, don’t let her watch most parts of the show in which she appears, reported the Associated Press. “I’m not allowed to watch the show,” Shipka told the AP. “My mom will tape it and then show me the scenes she feels are appropriate.”

Shipka continued to charm in a different interview, this time with New York Magazine telling an interviewer that she likes the Beatles -- like her on-camera persona Sally did -- and that “Here Comes the Sun” is her favorite Beatles tune. My favorite part was this exchange:

New York Magazine: . . . [W]hat’s the biggest question [fans] have about Jon Hamm?

Shipka: They’ll just come up to me and go, ‘Is he gorgeous?’ [Laughs.] Something – something like that.

NYM: Okay, so I guess I should ask you that question: Is he gorgeous?

Shipka: Is he gorgeous? [Laughs.] Well, I’m 10, so . . . I can’t really answer that question . . . I suppose . . .”


Image credit: ABC

Cam & Mitch’s Low-Keyed Modern Family Kiss

After the minor controversy (mostly online) over whether the gay couple on Modern Family would ever share an on-screen kiss, the writers delivered in a sweet, real way . . . with a storyline about Mitch’s difficulty (inherited from his father) in publicly displaying affection. When Cameron and Mitchell finally did kiss, it was discreet and in the background and felt authentic.

Parenthood Really Solid



After an uneven start last season, Parenthood continues to get better and better as I continue to strongly identify with its characters. From a mom trying to compete with her teen’s friend’s rich parents and a dad trying to make his son have an interest in him, to a helicopter mom hijacking her daughter’s campaign for class president, the writing has been solid. I reviewed the recent episode over on Clique Clack TV.

Image credits: AMC via Jezebel and ABC.

Amid the New Shows, Four Favorites Airing Season 1 Repeats

Image credit: ABC Family

While there’s ample fresh material on primetime TV with new and returning shows all over the TV schedule (The Good Wife premieres its second season tonight), a number of the freshman seasons of some well liked/loved shows are currently airing in repeats on cable:

Gilmore Girls: My daughter and I, both fans of the Gilmore Girls (feel free to play “Six Degrees of Lorelai Gilmore”), have enjoyed the season one repeats on the ABC Family channel of the sassy mother-daughter duo and the loony antics of their Stars Hollow neighbors. At this point in the first season, Lorelai’s already broken up with Max once, Rory’s still pretty new to Chilton and they haven’t met Rachel yet.

Friday Night Lights: ABC Family is also in the midst of running season one of Friday Night Lights, starting back when Eric Taylor was the new Dillon head football coach and Tami was Dillon High's guidance counselor. Issues ranging from former Dillon QB Jason Street dealing with his sudden paralysis to racial tensions at Dillon High all made FNL’s freshman season powerful.

Grey's Anatomy: Want to go back to square one with Grey’s Anatomy? Lifetime is, this week, airing the first few episodes of the medical drama, before the mass shooting, before Gizzie, before Denny and before the ferry boat accident, or, as some former fans might say, back when the show was edgy and new and McShiny.

The New Adventures of Old Christine: Lifetime has also started airing Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ funny and sarcastic The New Adventures of Old Christine, featuring Louis-Dreyfus' Christine, a deeply flawed divorced mom who lives with her brother and is prone to make an idiot of herself. It’s good to see this show get a new home, particularly after CBS execs treated it so badly.

Image credit: ABC Family.

Six Degrees of Lorelai Gilmore

Seeing that I’ve been writing about Parenthood for CliqueClack TV, coupled with the fact that my daughter has been watching repeats of the Gilmore Girls on ABC Family, I frequently think about Lorelai Gilmore, the well loved character played by Lauren Graham.

However last night I didn’t happen to be thinking about Lorelai/Lauren Graham at all when she suddenly came to mind because characters who’d appeared on Gilmore Girls with her kept appearing. There on The Event was Lorelai’s former fiancé Luke Danes (Scott Patterson), only he wasn't wearing his backwards baseball cap. (The Event also features the English teacher Lauren Graham’s new Parenthood character briefly dated.) While flipping through the stations, I spotted Lorelai’s other former fiancé, Max Medina (Scott Cohen) on Hawaii Five-O.

Could Lorelai Gilmore/Lauren Graham be a female Kevin Bacon?

As names of shows started popping into my head, I tested my fledgling theory:

Mad Men – There was Peyton Sanders, otherwise known as Don Draper on Mad Men (played by the awesome Jon Hamm), who Lorelai found to be such a dreadfully boring man that she refused to go on a second date with him, even though their second date was supposed to be attending a David Bowie concert.

Grey’s Anatomy – Lorelai’s father, Richard Gilmore (Edward Herrmann) did a three-episode stint where he played significantly older-than-usual surgical intern, Norman Shales.

The Good Wife – Lorelai’s daughter Rory dated Logan Huntzberger (Matt Czuchry) when they attended Yale. Now Logan’s making life difficult for one of Lorelai's peers, Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) in Chicago on The Good Wife.

Lost (it came to mind because I was thinking of The Event): This route is more circuitous, but still gets you to Lorelai in six links or less: Matthew Fox was on Party of Five with Scott Wolf, who was on The Nine with Kim Raver, who’s now on Grey’s Anatomy which had Edward Herrmann.

24 – Chloe O’Brian, Jack Bauer’s most trusted ally, appeared twice in the Gilmore Girls, once in Kirk’s odd black and white film (the whole thing is on the DVD set) and once as a troubadour who flouted Taylor Doose’s crackdown on troubadours who were crowding the Stars Hollow streets.

Modern Family -- Julie Bowen, who plays Claire Dunphy, played Matthew Fox’s wife on Lost. See the aforementioned Lost connection.

You can also link Desperate Housewives and Boston Legal to Lorelai through Duck Phillips/Paul Young, Mark Moses’ roles on Mad Men and Desperate Housewives respectively. Chilton's Headmaster Charleston (Dakin Matthews) also appeared on Desperate Housewives as Bree's pastor, providing a more direct link between Wisteria Lane and Stars Hollow.

It’s a fun game to play once you start . . .

Image credit: WB.

'Mad Men' -- Hands and Knees

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC

*Warning – Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

Weaknesses. And lies. Weaknesses compounded by lies. This “Hands and Knees” episode had all of this in spades.

Chief among them were Don’s lies, which became relevant again as Don feared that the feds would find him and send him to prison because he’s not who he says he is. Uncharacteristically, this prompted Don to have a panic attack in front of Faye, which, all and all, was acutally good for him because it prompted him to be honest to her about the fact that he’s living under an assumed name. (Don’s having a really, REALLY crappy year, don't you think?)

Related to Don’s lies is the fact that slimy Pete Campbell knows about them. So when the feds started sniffing around in order to provide security clearance for people at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce to work on the North American Aviation account, Don, fearing his Dick Whitman past would catch up with him, applied enormous pressure on Pete to lie on his behalf about “losing the account,” or else Don said Pete would have to try to run the company without him.

As Pete sat up late at night mourning the fact that he was going to have to “lose” the $4+ million client he’d landed after years of wooing and he complained about the burden the “honest people” have to shoulder for their ethically challenged brethren, Pete ironically took his pregnant wife Trudy in his arms, with her completely unaware of the fact that he had a gigantic lie he was hiding, that he had a baby with another woman years ago. The following day, Pete withstood a verbal flogging from Roger for "losing" North American Aviation because of his own inattention.

Don’s lies have even longer legs as they also affect Betty even though she’s now married to Henry. She protected Don by not telling the feds who showed up from the Defense Department what she knew about who her ex-husband is. The fact that Betty knows about Don’s identity fraud and hasn’t shared it with Henry, who has lofty political ambitions of his own, could cause a problem for her down the road.

Joan’s weakness, her Achilles heel, is Roger. She and he cheated on their spouses together. Joan got pregnant from their post-mugging incident in the alley and decided to have another abortion to avoid what she called “a tragedy” because she’d been apart from Greg for too long for it to be his baby, which was highly ironic given that she’d been anxious to have a baby with Greg and now he’s been deployed to Vietnam.

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC

Roger’s weakness is, conversely, Joan, however his getting Joan pregnant jeopardized his marriage to Jane. (“What kind of man are you?” the doctor, who was going to hook Joan up with someone who’d give her an illegal abortion, said to Roger. “You’ve used this woman . . . A man of your age, only slightly younger than myself, that you could behave with such selfishness, such irresponsibility.”)

A corollary to Roger’s frailties is the fact that Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s huge weakness is the fact that without Lucky Strike, the company could fold, go bankrupt. Lucky Strike – the company Don once said “could put out our lights” -- is Roger’s big raison d’etre, without it, he’s just the guy who inherited his company from his dad. God, Roger might have to actually do some work in the month that he has before he has to tell his colleagues the Lucky Strike account is history.

Then there was poor Lane, poor, poor Lane. How depressing is it to see a man of his age so fearful of his stuffy, judgmental, violent, bullying father, the senior citizen who walks with a cane. Lane's father arrived at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, instead of Lane’s son, to inform Lane that he was there to take him home to London to be with his wife and family. However Lane’s now in love with Toni, who works as a costumed waitress at the Playboy Club, but didn’t come right out and tell his father about the fact that he’s dating not only a waitress, but a woman of a difference race. This brought Lane face-to-face with his weakness: That he’s still a child who’s cowed by his father, who allowed his father to strike him in the head with a cane (drawing blood) and threaten to crush his hands with his shoe while Lane was lying on the floor in pain, crying uncle, as Don did in the face of Duck's fists. The physical bullying to make Lane get his “home in order” did the trick as Lane promptly told the other SCDP partners that he was taking a leave of absence to go to London.

So, just when things were starting to look up for the folks around SCDP – Don was getting healthy and cutting back on drinking while seeing his children and having an adult relationship based on trust with Faye; Roger was married and not cheating (up until last week); Pete and Trudy were expecting a baby and Lane had helped build a solid company – now everything seems precarious. It apparently takes very little to send all of their houses of cards to come crashing down on top of them.

But I must admit, I was half expecting Faye to help Don come clean, to turn himself in so he could indeed stop running, as he said he wanted to. I feel like Matthew Weiner is hinting that Don’s going to have a big, humiliating public exposure of his big lie, or will need to, in order for him to go forward. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Don’s luck seems like it’s going to run out, soon, but after he takes Sally to see the Beatles.

Image credits: Michael Yarish AMC.

Thoughts on TV's Fall Premiere Week

Image credit: Fox

*Warning -- Spoilers ahead from a whole bunch of season premieres.*

Lots of TV shows premiered this week, several more (The Good Wife, Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters) will be premiering in the next few days. Here’s a wrap-up of the good, the disappointing and the jury’s-still-out premieres:

House – The episode marked the official beginning of “Huddy.” As I watched House and Huddy spend a lot of time in bed and get emotionally intimate with one another, I was plagued by this question: How in the hell is a House-Cuddy romantic relationship going to work given that he’s a nut case and she’s, well, she’s Cuddy AND his boss AND has a small child at home?

That’s what the rest of the season will tell us apparently. I'm hoping this won't turn out disastrously, like so many of the pairings of leads who’ve been kept apart then become an official couple turn out to be. (FYI – LOVE Wilson.)

Image credit: NBC

The Event – I’m still licking my wounds from that Lost series finale which left me feeling duped and stupid for having invested so much time and energy trying to parse scenes, statements and motivations when none of it even mattered. And I still harbor disappointment about how last season’s FlashForward failed to capitalize on a fascinating premise. So when I watched the pilot episode of the complicated, flashback/flashforward/present time show I was leery of getting burned again. I’m not giving this show much time to hook me, I’ll tell ya that much.

Raising Hope – This quirky, politically incorrect half-hour comedy about a guy suddenly getting custody of a child he conceived on a one-night-stand -- with a woman he didn’t know was a serial killer -- surprised me. The hapless dad, who still lives with his parents (who had him when they were teens) and his loopy grandma, has a Malcolm in the Middle-like appeal. I’m intrigued.

Parenthood – I thought the first two episodes of the sophomore season of this show were well done – read my CliqueClack TV review of the latest episode here -- but I was surprised that the writers made Peter Krause’s character Adam Braverman look like an obnoxious control freak in the second installment. Still can’t stop seeing Lorelai Gilmore in Lauren Graham’s Sarah Braverman.

The Middle – This season two premiere resonated a bit too well and loudly in my household where three kids recently went back to school. It was set on the first day of school and featured Patricia Heaton’s Frankie Heck vowing that -- after day one of school went badly -- the family was going to start the new year off fresh and “get in front” of all the possible problems. Frankie's noble campaign, of course, backfired.

Image credit: ABC

 Modern Family – After so much pre-game hype, this premiere fell short of my insanely high expectations of it being laugh-out-loud funny from beginning to end, although Cameron ducking Mitchell’s crazy nailgun wielding was hilarious. As was "Buckety."

30 Rock – Okay, I know I’ll be inviting haters for saying this, but, even with Matt Damon on board, I was kind of bored with this premiere.

Grey’s Anatomy – Pitch. Perfect. This was a perfect follow-up to the tense, shocking season finale where 18 people at Seattle Grace were shot, 11 killed. The characters all responded differently to their emotional trauma, but I think Meredith Grey will, as usual, take longer to heal than the rest. Read my CliqueClack TV review of the premiere here.

Private Practice – After a rather unusual mashup of love scenes between Pete and Violet, and Cooper and Charlotte (the scenes reminded me of something out of a movie) this premiere disappointed me because, following the emotional punch of its season finale in May where a main character unexpectedly died, a volatile couple reunited while a kept-apart one got back together, I wanted more depth, more . . . something.

Your thoughts on the big fall TV premiere week?

Image credits: Fox, NBC and ABC.

What Happens When You Invite Stephen Colbert to Testify Before Congress . . . for Real

Why in the world would anyone ask a sharp, satirical TV talk show host to testify -- not do a comedic bit -- before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship & Border Security about the subject of immigrant farm workers? Hel-lo?! Do you people not know he's from Comedy Central? Did you fail to Google The Colbert Report? What were you thinking?





It was damned gutsy for Colbert, in character, to make a mockery over the fact that a congressional committee would invite the likes of him to speak on this issue.

Katy Perry/Elmo Video 'Too Hot' For 'Sesame Street'

After the folks at Sesame Street put a Katy Perry "Hot and Cold" video on YouTube -- where Perry chases Elmo around a set -- they didn't anticipate the reaction they'd get from parents: Distinctly cold.

The Huffington Post ran an excerpt of the statement released by the Street's honchos which said, in part:

"Sesame Street has a long history of working with celebrities across all genres, including athletes, actors, musicians and artists. Sesame Street has always been written on two levels, for the child and adult. We use parodies and celebrity segments to interest adults in the show because we know that a child learns best when co-viewing with a parent or care-giver. We also value our viewer's opinions and particularly those of parents. In light of the feedback we've received on the Katy Perry music video which was released on You Tube only, we have decided we will not air the segment on the television broadcast of Sesame Street, which is aimed at preschoolers. Katy Perry fans will still be able to view the video on You Tube."

What do you think? Is Perry's ensemble too much for the toddler set?

'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1:' Nov. 19

Mark down the date: November 19.

That's when the second-to-last Harry Potter movie will be released: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I.

I'm planning on taking my twin 12-year-olds to see it on opening weekend as this series is absolutely beloved in my house. My twins have read and re-read and analyzed the entire seven-book series countless times. Our kids have dressed up for Halloween as various Hogwarts students for years. (My older son looked eerily like Harry Potter the one year he was The Boy Who Lived for Halloween.)

My husband and I have read the series as well (me twice) and we, as a family, have been reading it aloud to our 9-year-old. (We're a third of the way through the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.) I must admit, I'm really enjoying reading it together.

When I watched the newly-released trailer for Part 1 of Deathly Hallows, it was depressing and sad, as I see Harry as one of the more tragic characters in children's literature and the end of the sixth book/movie, literally made me cry. (No one had yet spoiled the ending for me.)

My husband and I went to see The Town this past week (which I recommend for a thoroughly entertaining two hours) and he saw a poster promoting Deathly Hallows and said it was upsetting to see the image of Hogwarts, on fire, under the heading, "It All Ends Here." *sniff*



Will you be among those on line to see Deathly Hallows?

Image credit: Warner Brothers.

Notes on Pop Culture: Poehler on 'SNL,' 'Grey's' Sneak Peek & 'Modern Family'

One of my favorite comedians, Amy Poehler -- of NBC's underrated Parks & Recreation -- is hosting the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. I cannot wait. She’s been especially good when she’s appeared on SNL since departing as a cast regular, though I don’t think it’s possible for her to top the "Palin Rap" she performed when she was pregnant out . . . to . . . there . . . in 2008. NBC has released some promos:



Meanwhile, ABC has released a sneak peek of Grey’s Anatomy’s season seven post-hospital shooting premiere. I watched that shooting episode repeat last week, eerily on the same day when a real life shooting took place at Johns Hopkins. I hope that Shonda Rhimes & Company can deftly capitalize on the raw human emotions that an event like that would spawn but in a non-exploitative way, allowing the after-shocks to linger, instead of just pushing them aside for crazy-case-of-the-week drama.

Judging by a video excerpt ABC released, Derek's response to nearly dying after being shot by a disgruntled patient's husband is to speed like a maniac on the highway and get busted for it.

Don’t forget, tonight Modern Family and The Middle both return tonight. I’m hoping they’ll build upon strong freshmen seasons and that the Modern Family crew -- like the Mad Men folks -- will take its award accolades with grace, not let it destroy the sharp humor of the simple in the show and not muck it up with too many guest stars. *fingers crossed*

'Mad Men:' The Beautiful Girls

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

This episode was called “The Beautiful Girls,” but what it should’ve been called was “Beautiful Girls Put in Challenging, Compromising Situations.” It opened with Don and Faye taking their relationship to the next level as they literally knocked over a lamp while slamming around on Don’s bed.

The next day wasn’t so amorous for Don. In a day from hell, Don’s secretary died while sitting at her desk while he was in the middle of a meeting with clients and the staff comically tried to drag her body away so the clients wouldn’t see. This occurred right after Don’s daughter Sally ran away from home and begged for him to allow her to live with him “all the time,” by promising, “I’ll be good.”

It was hard not to feel for Sally who hates living at home and her mother clearly dislikes having her there as well, resents Sally. Sally was willing to scream, yell, kick, to do whatever it took so she wouldn’t have to return to Ossining to where Betty does not seem a whit happier than she was when she was married to Don and where she takes Sally’s unhappiness as a personal insult. When Don angrily told Betty to come and get Sally because he had “a business to run,” Betty replied, “Because it’s so easy. It’s so much for to take care of her. Enjoy . . . Enjoy Don, I’m meeting Henry in the city tomorrow night, I’ll get her then.”

The scene where Sally made French toast for her father – she said Carla had taught her how to make the dish, though I doubt she was taught to top with rum – reminded me of the scene after Betty was still in the hospital after having had Gene, where Don made hash and eggs for himself and Sally late at night and sat next to one another at the kitchen counter. The moment was a bonding one, a sweet one between father and daughter, an indication that Sally feels more connected to him than to her mother.

As for Don asking Faye to deal with a distraught Sally after Don had made it clear she had to go back home with Betty (this was the day after he’d asked Faye to watch Sally for an afternoon after she’d turned up at his office), I agree with what Faye said to Don afterward: That asking Faye to deal with Sally was a test, whether unconscious on Don's part or not, to see if Faye’s up to the task of dealing with his kids. I think the jury’s still out on how Faye would deal with the kids if she and Don made things official as she seems very stiff and formal around Sally, contrasting with how comfortable she seems with adults.

Then there was Joan, rocking a set of glasses in that scene at home, who wasn’t having a much better time of things, as her husband was informed he’d be shipped to Vietnam right after basic training. Roger tried to buck up her spirits by scheduling her for a massage then taking her to a dinner, after Mrs. Blankenship died. Then it became even grimmer: Joan and Roger got mugged and then, while they were full of adrenaline, did it in a filthy alley, steps away from where a gun was pointed at them.

Meanwhile, Peggy dispatched with an arrogant, big-mouthed radical activist named Abe who thought she’d find charming his criticism of her for working at an ad agency and doing work for clients who refused to hire African-Americans, especially when said criticism took the form of a “poem.” While Peggy seems fond of dabbling in the counter-culture, she doesn’t seem well suited for someone who’s got a political litmus test for the people he dates.

Most surprising were Peggy’s remarks about racial and gender discrimination: “Most of the things Negroes can’t do, I can’t do either and nobody seems to care . . . half of the meetings take place over golf or tennis at a bunch of clubs where I’m not allowed to be a member. The University Club said the only way I could eat dinner there was if I arrived in a cake.”

I loved it when Peggy got up and left the bar after the sanctimonious Abe, who clearly was blind to gender discrimination, joked about whether there was a need for a “civil rights march for women.”

Best line of the night came from Burt Cooper when speaking of Mrs. Blankenship: “She was born in 1898 in a barn. She died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper. She’s an astronaut.”

Overall, this episode felt odd to me, not bad “odd,” just odd, odd, with wildly varying themes like Civil Rights and feminism, fall-out from a divorce where a child doesn’t like her custodial parent, the concern of a wife whose husband is being sent to a war zone and the fear of one's own mortality in the face of a colleague's sudden death.

What did you think of “The Beautiful Girls?”

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

Combining Brian Williams with 'Mad Men's' Jon Hamm & Jimmy Fallon

What do you get when you put Mad Men's Jon Hamm next to Jimmy Fallon and throw into the mix my favorite TV news anchor, Brian Williams? This Late Night with Jimmy Fallon bit:

Fall TV Previews: The Underdog Comedy, 'The Middle'

This Patrica Heaton-led family sitcom -- about a solidly middle class married couple, their two teens and grade school-aged son – was overshadowed last season by the cutting edge comedy Modern Family. But The Middle’s got it goin’ on when it comes to tapping into the humor, the desperation and the insanity of modern day parenting. The Mother's Day episode last season was perfectly spot on.

The season two premiere features parents Frankie and Mike Heck appealing to Brick’s new teacher – played by Doris Roberts, Heaton’s former Everybody Loves Raymond foil – to use kid gloves when dealing with their quirky youngest child.

The sneak preview released by ABC (see video below) features Roberts criticizing Frankie as a helicopter mom, frequently calling her “Mommy,” her voice dripping with sarcasm, and chiding Frankie for asking for special treatment for Brick just three days into the school year.

The Middle’s second season premieres on Sept. 22.

Notes on Pop Culture: Bye-Bye 'My Boys,' 'The Big C' Gets Crazy, Fall TV Previews

Bye-Bye My Boys

Just as news about the reported sexual harassment of a female sports journalist is making headlines nationwide (I’ll write more about that in another post), TBS goes and cancels the comedy My Boys, whose lead character PJ Franklin, (Jordana Spiro) is a sporty woman who's also a sports reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. That just stinks. I was fond of PJ.

The Big C Gets Crazy

While the latest episode of The Big C showcased Laura Linney’s cancer patient acting all wild, crazy and impulsive by emptying her 401K, buying a red convertible (without researching it in Consumer Reports first!), splurging on pricey champagne, bribing a restaurant waitress to keep her wine glass full during lunch and pretending to be her dermatologist’s girlfriend when she forced herself to accompany him on his house hunting trip, I wondered in my episode review on CliqueClack TV whether the show can keep this particular thread going: Watching Cathy go through various iterations of acting on every whim as a response to her dire cancer diagnosis.



Fall TV Previews

I surveyed the new and returning fall shows in my pop culture column this week. The show I’m most anxious to see: Modern Family. Can't. Wait.



After last season’s gripping finale, I’m looking forward to Grey’s Anatomy’s return as well. (There are abundant spoilers floating around about a wedding between a particularly challenged Grey's couple in the season seven premiere.)

One show about which I’m on the fence: Desperate Housewives.

I’m also intrigued by The Event but fear it may be a let-down a la FlashForward.

What fall shows are you looking forward to seeing?

Image credit: TBS via Entertainment Weekly.

'Mad Men' Cast Throws in Their Two Cents on The Summer Man

It was interesting to see what Elisabeth Moss and Christina Hendricks had to say about how their storylines played out in "The Summer Man" as they had very different perspectives than I did on it.

They actresses believe Peggy was proven to have made the wrong move in firing Joey, which they said established Joan as "just" a powerless secretary and Peggy as a "humorless bitch." I, however, think Peggy was seizing power and respect, as Don advised her to do, and showed that the boorishness has consequences. She also showed that she could directly wield power, not just indirectly manipulate people to get what she wants like Joan was trying to do, but failed.

While watching the AMC video recap of the episode, I also noticed for the first time that Don's gift to Gene was a big stuffed elephant. He brought an elephant into the room. Into his former house (is it still the one that the Francis family was supposed to have already vacated according to the divorce decree?) Hmm.

'Mad Men:' The Summer Man (Otherwise Known as Don's Turning a Corner)

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

“People tell you who they are but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be.”

“When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him . . . If you listen, he’ll tell you how he got there.”

– Don Draper writing in his journal

Did you hear that? That was the sound of Don Draper bouncing off of rock bottom and starting to rebuild his shattered life. He’s finally coming up for air.

In “The Summer Man,” Don started to cut back on the drinking, began swimming (though he wheezes with smoker’s cough) and is dating as opposed to sleeping with escorts for whose sexual services he paid. He actually sent his secretary BACK to the store to RETURN liquor. When he was in a moment of stress, instead of reaching for the bottle as his instincts told him to do, he asked for coffee. He’s trying in earnest to, as he put it, “gain a modicum of control over the way I feel. I want to wake up. I don’t want to be that man.”

And Don is keeping a diary, something that requires him to have to examine his days, his thoughts, and actually survey what’s become of his life. He knows it’s not pretty. Through the beautifully lyrical voice-overs of Don reading aloud his journal entries – where we learned that Don didn’t finish high school and said if he had “everything could’ve been different” – we hear Don’s inner monologue for the first time, getting a glimpse into not just what he’s doing in his private moments, but what he’s thinking and feeling, something I think he never even really wanted to do before this because those feelings were just too scary.

As Don sat down to watch the news while eating Dinty Moore beef stew and drinking a can of Bud (NOT his preferred amber colored liquid), Don didn’t look like the sad sack who, in previous episodes this season, would come home from work, pointedly refuse to eat anything, grab a glass filled with liquor and eventually pass out on the couch. To see Don sitting at a table and eating is a sign that he cares about his physical health. While he chronicles his thoughts, he’s dealing with his mental and emotional health by working through issues like this one: “Sunday is Gene’s birthday party. I know I can’t go. I keep thinking about him. He was conceived in a moment of desperation and born into a mess.”

While Don obviously still aches to be part of his family again, I was pleased to see in this episode that though he had another date with Bethany, he realized she’s not a good match for him. (That crack from her about being in “different generations” and that she needed more from Don, and his response, “We are from different generations because I don’t remember women pushing this hard,” was a gigantic red flag.)

Bethany is simply a younger, naïve Betty, a replacement Betty, Don repeating past mistakes. Nothing made that clearer than to have the two of them, Betty and Bethany, in the same restaurant, wearing similarly colored dresses and blond hair in an updo, and to watch Don squirm as he was put into a corner about why he hasn’t called Bethany more often and about why he seems unknowable to Bethany, something Betty also complained about. “Don’t you want to be close with anyone?” Bethany asked, while desperately asking for more “intense, prolonged contact” with Don.

By contrast, Don’s behavior with Faye when they went on their date – after which he declined to physically go further than necking in the cab, unlike what he allowed Bethany to do to him in the cab – was starkly different. Faye reminds me of Rachel Mencken, a smart, educated businesswoman who exudes confidence and who is in control of her own life. With Rachel, Don opened up a bit, revealed himself to her, like sharing a story about his mother in a way he’d never done with Betty, at least not willingly. While speaking with Faye, he voluntarily “took off” his emotional coat and gave it to her by mentioning how he wasn’t welcome at Gene’s party, how Gene thinks Henry’s his father, again, something he would've never done with Bethany who remarked that every date with Don seemed like a first one because she didn’t know him at all.

The Joan-Joey-Peggy storyline was challenging to watch as Joan was mercilessly sexually harassed by Joey, aided and abetted by mooner Stan, as the impudent Joey reeled off these lines to and about Joan:

“The big Ragu . . . she’s an overblown secretary.” (Said to Peggy.)

“What do you do around here besides walking around like you’re trying to get raped?” (Said to Joan after she said his behavior won’t be “tolerated here.”)

“You’re not some young girl off the bus. I don’t need some madam from a Shanghai whorehouse to show me the ropes.” (To Joan.)

Joey targeting Joan for his barrage of insults and ongoing, unrepentant, sexually hostile disrespect, and Joan’s angry response toward Peggy served to illustrate the different places Joan and Peggy are in.

Joan is of old school thinking. She went to Don, then to Lane, hoping they'd just take care of the problem for her. She didn't say directly what happened to her and she veiled her issues under the weak heading of “there have been complaints” so that it didn’t appear as though she was the only one having problems with Joey. She thought her indirect methods were best, however they’re not getting the job done, not anymore.

Peggy’s way -- directness, no BS, taking on Stan’s baloney – is the one that is commanding respect in the workplace. With Don urging Peggy to seize the power (“I wouldn’t tolerate that if I were you . . . You want some respect, go out there and get it for yourself.”), Peggy did just that by firing the little pissant who posted the obscene cartoon of Joan on her office window and idiotically wised off to Peggy when she called him on it. To Joan -- who only feels empowered and comfortable in taking on other women and who clearly wanted Don to swoop in and rescue her from Joey’s nonsense -- found Peggy’s decisiveness extremely threatening, which is why I think she was so nasty to Peggy in the elevator, because Joan had lost her power while Peggy had gained it.

Oh . . . on the scenes of Betty -- who mistakenly believes Don is “living the life” -- where she fled to the restaurant bathroom after seeing Don on a date with her younger doppelganger and became very, very upset (smoking up a storm, sweating, dropping her purse), coupled with the longing gaze she directed at Don when he appeared at Gene’s birthday party (to which he was not invited courtesy of the increasingly angry Henry Francis, who intentionally crushed Don’s boxes in the garage and suggested to Betty that they’d rushed into their marriage . . . ya think?!), those were also big, stinkin’ red flags.

And hearing the Rolling Stones on Mad Men -- the show I associate with fedoras and women in big skirts – was jarring. But obviously, the times, styles and social mores were in a state of flux and folks could either get on board or let them, like that younger swimmer in the pool whom Don wanted to beat to the wall, pass people by.

What did you think of “The Summer Man?” Of Don’s dealings with Bethany and Faye? Of the Joan-Peggy-Joey situation? The “we have everything including pent-up anger” Francis family? Anyone hear echoes from the "Marriage of Figaro" episode in season one?

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

Notes on Politics: The Would-Be Book-Burning Pastor & 'Morning Joe'

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I usually have the tiny TV in my kitchen tuned to MSNBC’s Morning Joe as I read the morning newspapers, guzzle down cups of coffee and help the kids get off to school on time on weekday mornings. I love the thoughtful, honest back-and-forth, the appreciation for varying viewpoints and for the fact that people aren’t stock characters right out of Hollywood’s Central Casting, that if you’re a Republican, you always think X or if you’re a Democrat, you always think Y and neither the twain shall meet.

Which is why this morning when I heard that they were going to interview the Florida clergyman who made international headlines by saying he was going to burn Korans on September 11, I was surprised.

Then my surprise morphed into something else after I watched the segment.

Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski introduced Pastor Terry Jones on live TV, then told him that journalist and former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham had a “message” for him. Meacham then proceeded to lecture Jones on the teachings of Jesus and about forgiveness and asked him, one Christian to another, to not burn the Korans. “The course you suggested is going to be incredibly dangerous and [I] would ask you to desist in the name of New Testament theology,” Meacham said.

At which point, Brzezinski replied, “Pastor Terry Jones, we appeal to you to listen to that, and we don’t really need to hear anything else, so thanks.” Then the satellite feed to Jones was taken off screen and the panelists discussed the matter without him.

Some people think this was a good way to “marginalize a media whore,” but I don’t.

Morning Joe's raison d'être is providing analysis on news, politics and culture, conducting interviews and asserting learned, sometimes passionate opinions while trying to fight their way through a thicket of ideas and ideologies to get to some semblance of truth. But inviting a person on your program under the guise of interviewing him, lecturing him then shutting off the camera was too far over the line for me. It felt wrong. It felt unfair and if there’s one thing that Morning Joe usually isn’t is unfair.

If you think the nutty pastor with a flock of a few dozen is damaging the country, is threatening to do something vile and is getting a disproportionate level of international media attention (far too much if you ask me), then you have two choices from an ethical standpoint: Either refuse to give him airtime and attention or give him airtime but pummel him with pointed, yet fair questions and allow him to do the damage to himself.

I don’t like what this pastor wanted to do – or what the Drudge Report is saying other unhinged so-called pastors and other people are planning to do tomorrow at various locations – and don’t see how it’s an answer or solution to anything. It certainly isn’t an apt memoriam for those who were killed by terrorists on September 11.

But what I saw on Morning Joe this morning really bothered me, as a journalist and as a Morning Joe fan.

Morning Joe coverage this morning notwithstanding, what do you think of the way the media has handled this story?

I Want to See 'The Town' Next Week, Who's With Me?

There are several reasons why I'm anxious to see The Town in the theaters when it opens next week:

1. It features the fabulous Jon Hamm of Mad Men.

2. It's set in Boston.

3. It has scenes from Fenway Park.

4. Its screenplay was co-written and directed by Ben Affleck.

5. Entertainment Weekly gave the movie an A- saying, "Affleck the actor, meanwhile, does his best work playing flawed characters, surrounded by strong colleagues."

The reviewer, Lisa Schwarzbaum also observed, "The Town is like . . . a rich, dark, pulpy mess of entanglements that fulfills all the requirements of the genre, and is told with an ease and gusto that make the pulp tasty. Mad Men's Jon Hamm is solid as a he-means-business FBI guy . . . The Town is the good work of a guy on a path of discovery, with Boston as the artist's own Freedom Trail."

6. A reviewer from Variety wrote: "The behind-the-camera talent Ben Affleck displayed so bracingly in Gone Baby Gone is confirmed, if not significantly advanced, in The Town. Again proving a fine director of actors (this time with himself in a starring role), Affleck delivers another potent, serious-minded slice of pulp set on Boston's meanest streets, where loyalty among thieves runs thicker than blood."

I'm sold, are you?

Fall TV Previews: 'The Good Wife's' Sophomore Season Features Big Choices

The solid freshman season of CBS’s The Good Wife concluded with Alicia Florrick -- after having beaten an unattached twentysomething for the post of junior associate at the law firm where she works -- trying to decide whether she wants to remain by the side of her duplicitous husband who publicly humiliated her by cheating with call girls, and who spent time in prison for corruption but now wants to run for public office again.

She's been maintaining a brave face for their two children, but, behind the scenes, we know that Alicia’s mulling over advances made by her boss Will, a friend from her law school days.

I'm looking forward to the politics/political spouse angles and story arcs about how Peter's campaign will affect his family more than a love triangle between Alicia, Peter and Will. Let's face it, the politics and the betrayed political spouse/Silda Spitzer angle is what makes this show fresh.

The Good Wife’s second season premieres on Sept. 28 at 10 p.m.

Notes on Pop Culture: Dysfunctional Showtime Moms, Cancer on TV, Binging on 'Covert Affairs'

Dysfunctional Showtime Moms

When the Wall Street Journal ran a story this past spring saying that Showtime was cultivating a slate of shows featuring dysfunctional, strong women, building on the success of Weeds, I think they were underplaying it.

After watching the first few episodes of the new season of Weeds and the new Laura Linney cancer dramedy The Big C, on top of what they've with Edie Falco’s Nurse Jackie and Toni Collette’s United States of Tara the word "dysfunctional" doesn’t quite cover it. I wrote about Showtime's off-beat moms in my latest pop culture column this week.

Cancer on TV

Speaking of The Big C, watching Linney’s Cathy Jamison -- who’s upending her life in the wake of her stage 4 cancer diagnosis -- got me thinking about TV characters and cancer and how other characters dealt with the news.

As I thought about TV and cancer, for some reason, my mind kept going to Charlie Salinger from the 1990s show Party of Five. While Charlie didn't immediately shake things up in his life when he learned he had cancer, he did make some changes after he went into remission. (The video below features the scene where Charlie learned he'd gone into remission and shared the news with his family.)

My CliqueClack TV post looked at Charlie, Kitty Walker from Brothers & Sisters, Lynette Scavo from Desperate Housewives, Walter White from Breaking Bad and Izzie Stevens from Grey’s Anatomy.



Binging on Covert Affairs

I’d only seen a small number of episodes of USA’s new CIA drama Covert Affairs up until this week, when I decided to binge on them. It’s not Alias. Annie Walker is certainly no Sydney Bristow. But Covert Affairs is kind of light, kind of unexpectedly twisty and fun to watch, plus I get to see actors whom I've admired from other shows, like Anna Dudek (who’s fierce on Big Love, was conniving on House and is distinctly 60s suburban mom on Mad Men), Sendhil Ramamurthy (who was the mysterious researcher on Heroes), Peter Gallagher (of late from Rescue Me where he was an unconventional priest), Kari Matchett (who’d been turned into an alien but didn’t know it on Invasion and a political advisor on 24), plus I got to see D.W. Moffett. (Joe McCoy on Friday Night Lights)

Covert Affairs has been renewed for a second season.

Fall TV Previews: 'Grey's Anatomy' Releases Season 7 Promo Posters

Grey’s Anatomy had one of the best season finales of the spring back in May with its taut, grisly shooter-in-Seattle Grace storyline. (Refresh your memory with my season six finale review for CliqueClack TV here. Just watching the video below gave me that edge-of-your-seat feeling all over again.)



Derek sustained a serious gunshot wound. Alex was shot and bleeding out. Owen was shot in the shoulder. Meredith miscarried her baby. Two Mercy Westers were murdered, one shot to the head, another shot then bled out in Dr. Bailey’s arms. The hospital staff was completely traumatized as more than one person (Owen, the Chief, Meredith) put him- or herself in harm’s way in order to save others.

When Grey’s Anatomy returns on Sept. 23, it’ll be in the wake of all this violent carnage. In the meantime, ABC has released several promotional posters for the medical drama’s seventh season all of which are a bit edgy, a long way from the emphasis on the sexcapades in on-call rooms, and all feature some take on the theme of “healing.”

'Mad Men's' Creator: 'Don and Peggy Love Each Other'

I intentionally avoided watching the AMC video, “Inside Mad Men: The Suitcase” before writing my review of the episode because I didn’t want to be tainted by what Matthew Weiner, Jon Hamm or Elisabeth Moss had to say about the powerful seventh episode, “The Suitcase” before I gave my own spin on it.

That being said, I found it intriguing to hear creator/writer Weiner say, “Don and Peggy love each other. There’s no doubt about it.”

Then Weiner added, “Peggy’s there to help him up” from his downward spiral. I certainly hope so. This version of Don that we’ve seen this season, damn, is it depressing.

'Mad Men:' The Suitcase (Otherwise Known as When Peggy Became Anna, Sort Of)

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

We always knew that Peggy and Don had a special relationship. They both have deep secrets that they’ve only partially shared with one another . . . which is more than they’ve shared with others.

Don knows all about Peggy’s secret pregnancy, her involuntarily mental commitment and didn’t care. He still wanted her to work for him and was determined to pretend as though her whole pregnancy and her denial of the pregnancy, never happened.

Therefore he trusted her, trusted her when he and Bobbie Barrett got into a booze-fueled car wreck and Peggy not only bailed them out but let Bobbie stay in her apartment until her bruises faded. He chased Peggy down and begged her to work at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, saying that if she didn’t work for him he’d spend his whole life trying to hire her. He also added that little chestnut about how he sees himself in Peggy and that’s why he’s as hard on her as he is on himself.

For her part, Peggy felt indebted to Don for not only plucking her from the secretarial pool and christening her as a copywriter, but for keeping her secret and not treating her with sexist kid gloves.

That was all backstory for this strangely intimate episode, “The Suitcase.”

“I got drawn into his web,” Peggy said, explaining to Mark why she was going to be late to their dinner after Don pressured and berated Peggy into staying at the office with him. Don may have or may not have realized that he was doing anything he could to get Peggy -- who’s very susceptible to Don’s guilt trips -- to stay in his company for the evening, including revealing things about himself personally (about being a farm boy, about his father, about Uncle Mac, about Korea), so he wouldn’t have to face the fact that he would have to call Anna’s house in California and be told that Anna ("the only person in the world who really knew me") had died, something which broke his heart, left Dick Whitman feeling completely alone.

At first, the tension was over the fact that Peggy wanted to leave and Don didn’t want her to. To be fair, Peggy didn’t tell Don until she was an hour late for Mark’s surprise dinner for her, that it was her birthday and she had dinner plans. When Don learned that she had plans, he got all snippy and nasty but told her to go, though he clearly didn’t want her to. Only thing was, Peggy didn’t really want to go. She didn’t want to have dinner with Mark and her family. What she wanted seemed a lot closer to what Don was looking for that night, even as she was verbally lashing back at Don, giving as good as she got from him.

This all seemed like one big test for Peggy who, three times during “The Suitcase,” had men telling her that the money spent on her or handed to her (whether in the form of a salary, a set of phony business cards or a dinner in a nice restaurant) meaning that she owed them something, a notion she rejected on all three accounts.

What DID move Peggy wasn’t people telling her exactly how much they’d spent a lot for a shrimp cocktail, it was when people demonstrated that not only did they trust her and have enough confidence in her to treat her like a smart, professional woman, but also had the wherewithal to back up what they were saying. (Duck’s empty promises of making her a creative director were all just a pretense to get her into bed again. The petulant Mark used her birthday as a tool to ingratiate himself with Peggy’s mother, regardless of what Peggy may have wanted to do to celebrate her day.)

Don -- mired in the depths of his personal alcoholic rock bottom -- argued with Peggy (who was unafraid of telling him off, accusing him of stealing ideas while drunk and not sharing credit) and made her cry in a way that reminded me of a big brother-little sister relationship. However Don also built Peggy up by telling her she’s smart and “cute as hell,” but not because he was trying to get sex out of her. Peggy also knows that Don is not going to impulsively give her her walking papers if she breaks dinner plans. He’s not going to call Peggy a whore, even when he asks her if she knows who the father of her baby was and he learns that Peggy’s mother thinks it was Don. In fact, I doubt Don would sever the relationship with Peggy (she’s the one who threatened to do so when Don didn’t ask her to join SCDP, he initially told her to). Their odd relationship can withstand fighting and tears, like some kind of strong, albeit somewhat dysfunctional marriage.

Come to think of it, that little grasp of the hand at the end of the episode, where Don touched Peggy’s hand after asking her not to criticize his ideas for the Samsonite campaign (although he’d been pretty brutal to her ideas the previous night), seemed like an indication from Don that what he wanted from Peggy wasn’t sex – which he could get from anyone -- it was a real, emotional connection which he sought, like what he shared with Anna. Despite his put-downs of Peggy, which seem to worsen as his feelings of self-hatred increase, Don trusts Peggy with secrets, like the OUI arrest and that his dad was killed by getting kicked by a horse. He didn't trust Betty that way. Which is why, as Don lost the one woman on earth whom he felt truly knew and loved him despite all his frailties, he clung to Peggy, the new Anna.

There were more than a few moments of weirdness in “The Suitcase:”

Weirdest Moment I: “Why is there a dog in the Parthenon?”

Weirdest Moment II: Listening to Sterling’s Gold tapes about Bert Cooper and “the queen of perversions” Ida Blankenship (!) and the removal of Cooper’s testicles.

Weirdest Moment III: Duck wanting to leave a “present” for Don and Don then crying “uncle” when Duck had him pinned. So much for Don the tough guy who clocked Jimmy Barrett in the face.

Come to think of it, the entire episode was saturated in boxing analogies, with the Liston-Ali fight as the jumping off point. When Liston went down shortly after the match began and all the folks in the bar were yelling, “Get up,” I kept thinking that that’s how I felt about Don. I wanted someone to yell at him to get the hell up off the mat, stop staying uncle, stop wrecking his career and sabotaging every relationship he has left. Get up off the mat Don.

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

Fall TV Previews: 'Parenthood' Returns for Sophomore Season

I enjoyed the brief (13 episodes), uneven freshman season of Parenthood this spring. By the time the last few new episodes had aired – the high school bullying storyline was excellent – I’d grown to look forward to new installments, particularly to the work of Peter Krause, who’s Adam Braverman, and Mae Whitman, who plays Amber Holt.

NBC has released two new promos for the second season but they don’t offer much by way of new information.





Parenthood’s season two premiere is slated for Tuesday, Sept. 14.

Fall TV Previews: Sookie St. James Gets Her Own Show with 'Mike & Molly'

. . . except she’s not Sookie the talented, uber-chef at the charming Connecticut jewel known as the Dragonfly Inn anymore, cracking wise with Dragonfly co-owner/best friend Lorelai Gilmore on the Gilmore Girls.

Sookie St. James has moved on, as has Lorelai Gilmore who’s now appearing under the name “Sarah Braverman” on Parenthood. Melissa “Sookie” McCarthy returns to TV this fall in the new CBS comedy, Mike & Molly. McCarthy plays Molly Flynn, a fourth grade teacher, who finds a potential love interest at a Chicago Overeaters Anonymous meeting in the form of police officer Mike Biggs.



I’ve always liked McCarthy. I just hope that Mike & Molly provides her with some funny/goofy material that will make me stop thinking of her as Sookie St. James. However the promos didn’t exactly have me rolling on the floor.


Mike & Molly premieres Monday, Sept. 20 at 9:30.